


Pangaea

by princewardo



Category: Jurassic Park (Movies), Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-05
Updated: 2012-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-30 15:21:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/333168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princewardo/pseuds/princewardo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JURASSIC PARK AU. DINOSAUR KIDFIC. ||  They have the island, the enclosures and labs and hotels and gift shops and all the little monetizing pieces that Eduardo bullied Mark into letting him get away with. They even have the first of the population: tiny baby stegosaurus that Dustin insists on carrying around and nursing to the point that even he, their so-called reptile specialist, has to admit they’re getting a little on the chubby side for three month old herbivores.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pangaea

Planning the budget for a fucking dinosaur park is a nightmare.

Eduardo spends weeks alternately poring over lists and list and spreadsheets and memos and order sheets, and then dramatically groaning and screaming into his hands, breaking only to continue noting down outrageous figures in his scratchy handwriting. It’s never “two bales of hay”, it’s always “twelve hundred tons”, or fucking “one hundred thousand units” next to listings like “herbivore feed” and “hormone replacement for carnivorous embryos” and what the fuck, Chris?

He calls Chris into his tiny paper-strewn campus office exactly six times to try to explain exactly what the hell it is that Chris desperately _needs_ , rather than wants in some ideal world, and why do all the chemicals cost a thousand dollars a litre? Most of these items are not real words. No word deserves to be twenty-six letters long with three hyphens.   Chris assures him that he is incorrect, and threatens to complain to Mark that his resources are being unduly restricted.

Eduardo deals with this kind of insubordination by frowning for about twenty seconds longer than Chris can handle, “Okay, no, Wardo, I can do it with five hundred litres instead, but that is the very least, okay?”

Wardo sighs and jots down the numbers, painstakingly multiplying the prices, carrying the tenths, and hundredths and thousandths, and finally underlining all the totals so hard the pen scores through the paper.

Eduardo is a soft touch when it comes to Mark’s plans, but he is determined to at least pretend to be a hard ass about it.

Chris feels bad about neglecting to divulge that he can probably easily synthesize the compound he wants from natural resources on the island. This way is faster, though, and he figures that what Eduardo’s technically bottomless (despite the way Wardo non-verbally threatens to strangle anyone who requests backup equipment) budget doesn’t know probably won’t hurt him. 

Besides, Mark is hassling him day and night, sending him terse emails that generally read something along the lines of:

  
CHRIS, YOU PROMISED ME DINOSAURS BY NOW, I  
HAVE THE EQUATIONS, I NEED MY GENETICS NOW.  
CHRIS. DON’T THINK I WON’T OUTSOURCE.

 

Eduardo would probably spontaneously give birth to an actual baby brontosaurus if Mark carried out that threat, because if there was anything Eduardo would hate more than having to construct a new budget, it would be having to construct a new budget around the introduction of Sean Parker, rock star geneticist extraordinaire.

They have the island, the enclosures and labs and hotels and gift shops and all the little monetizing pieces that Eduardo bullied Mark into letting him get away with. They even have the first of the population: tiny baby stegosaurus that Dustin insists on carrying around and nursing to the point that even he, their so-called reptile specialist, has to admit they’re getting a little on the chubby side for three month old herbivores.

Mark has somehow managed to charm a trio of their velociraptors –

 

(Chris is frankly worried at this, and he’s made a note to himself to check on Mark’s programming for anomalies in their genetics, because nothing in his chemical work indicates that the dinosaurs in the park should be hailing Mark as a god. Plus, Eduardo has a minor coronary whenever Mark comes back from their glass pen with more than a nip to his ankles. )

 

– and now that the pack is reaching dinosaur adolescence, Dustin spends about 50% of his limited time with them muttering David Attenborough-style lines about the pack following their leader and strategically hunting, entrapping and devouring the young of his enemies.

Eduardo demands a halt to the jokes about how Mark should take his dinosaur friends and infiltrate the nearby Winklevoss Island Resort with their combination of wits and razor sharp teeth (and that’s just Eduardo’s description of Mark, Chris is disturbed to hear).

Dustin just won’t drop the idea of leading them into battle on the back of a brontosaurus (Dustin’s ideas boggle the mind, honestly, as if a brontosaurus would reliably walk in an actual direction rather than just devour the nearest forest for six days – and shouldn’t Dustin know this kind of thing?).

However, the more journals that pile up on Chris’s desk (Paleontology Today, Biology Magazine, Genetics Quarterly, DINOSAURS DINOSAURS DINOSAURS, Popular Science, fucking Time magazine), all of them plastered with Sean Parker’s fluorescent white smile and groundbreaking contributions to the field – well, the less inclined Chris is to sit on the fence.

Sean Parker is just a dick who is temporarily outclassing Chris (which is utter bullshit, Chris was in his EvoBio class in second year and he had WASTED Sean’s exam score by a full five percent, so take that, dickhead). If Chris could be the face on the magazine that recounts Sean being devoured by velociraptors, as long as those raptors are a Hughes production, well, it would be enough for him.   He wouldn’t say that he is fame hungry, but the competition does push ten new species into production within a week. Like Mark, he wants the island to go online as soon as possible.

“Did you pack?”

Mark mutters noncommittally from the other side of his laptop. Eduardo stares at the sky in despair, apparently counting.

Dustin dumps an assortment of his own luggage in the back of their hired SUV, and grins at Chris from behind Eduardo’s back. He staggers about, silently miming a throttling movement, finishing on his knees in the dust, hands in the air, mouthing numbers at the same rate that Eduardo appears to be.

“I can see you, Dustin.” Mark says.

Eduardo whips around, “Did you fall over, Dustin?” he asks genuinely, and Dustin has to disguise a snort with an incredibly fake sneeze.

“No, no. I just brought my stuff. I’m heading out with the kids now.”

Eduardo looks at him blankly.

“The...first generation population?” He tries again.

Eduardo nods his assent to that, “Be careful. According to the itinery, we should arrive at about the same time.”

Dustin beams, and claps Eduardo on the shoulder fondly, “Loosen up, Wardo, the hard part is over. Daddy Mark and Uncle Chris are down with their science. Now we just have to raise them right.”

“I have the utmost confidence in your mothering abilities, Wardo,” Mark contributes unexpectedly, shutting his laptop with a click.

Eduardo shoots him a warning glance with a hint of a soft smile to it. He takes Mark’s bag from him, stowing it in the front passenger seat. “Let’s start this park then.”

Dustin gives Chris a quick fist bump, and waves to the crew of the seaplane they’ve commissioned especially for the final shift onto the island. They hear the engine roar into life faintly.

“Don’t waste time on the scenic route,” he shouts, jogging backwards towards his own ride, “Helicopters cost money, right, mom?”

“Shut up, Dustin.” Eduardo says good-naturedly, herding Mark into the car. He can’t deny that he feels the galvanizing prickle of dino magic that has pushed them all to this point.

 

\---

 

 

Eduardo drives them to the helicoptor hire in silence. They're all keyed up, but no-one wants to break the tension until they're climbing into the chopper, bags crammed around them like lumpy cushions.

 

The pilot signals the lift off and his co-pilot slammed the door shut. It cuts out the roar of the wind and Wardo feels his stomach drop as they leave the ground. He stares resolutely at the grilled floor, digging around in his pocket for the last minute list of tasks he'd penned the night before. They're all crossed out, some of them twice. The post office had started hanging up on him after the third time he'd called to check they knew to direct all their mail to the PO Box for the Park.

A hand covers his suddenly, crumpling the list, and tossing it aside. Eduardo bites back the urge to snap. Mark squeezes his fingers tight around Eduardo's for a moment, warm and reassuring, before withdrawing them without a word.

Eduardo smiles. He figures that Mark knows where to go from here. It is his park, after all. They are in the air now, planning finished, shipments lodged and most of them already delivered. Dustin is minding the last of the prototypes they’ve been raising in Cambridge (he’s probably spoiling them stupid in the hull of that seaplane).

A snore alerts him to the fact that Chris had finally succumbed to sleep. He figures it is fair enough. Their friend has engineered them an island full of dinosaurs in under twenty-four months, which is more than anyone Eduardo knows can boast.

“Sleep, Wardo.” Mark says, quietly. He kicks some of Dustin’s bags around, making space for Eduardo’s ridiculously long legs.

His colleague has been awake almost as long as Mark has, and even Mark can recognise that this isn’t a healthy move when you are expected to start co-running a park filled with carnivorous animals and reptiles in less than ten hours.

Eduardo shrugs and shut his eyes. “Are you going to rest as well?” he murmurs.

“Maybe.” Mark says simply. He straightens Eduardo’s jacket, smoothing out the way the fabric lays over his chest. Eduardo makes a soft noise of surprise and huffs, settling into a deeper sleep.

Mark nods, and stands carefully, stepping over to tap the co-pilot on the shoulder.

“I’d like you to make an unscheduled stop. Winklevoss Island Resort. Land on the beach front, please. At least try to be discreet.”

 

\---

 

To say that Chris is upset to wake up to find Sean Parker nudging him excitedly is the understatement of the century.

"Is this a nightmare?" He asks, blurrily. "Did we crash and get dumped in hell? I always wondered what God's stance on genetic engineering is. I guess we know now."

Sean is laughing, as if he thinks Chris is joking.

"Chris! You were always so funny. Hey, where's that ginger who was always following you round? The circus animal trainer or whatever?"

Chris refuses to dignify that with a response.

"Oh, sorry, I'll keep it down. The wife's sleeping, right?" He wriggles his eyebrows in Eduardo's direction, and then at Mark, who is instructing the irritated looking pilot on exactly where to land.

Chris feels suddenly very homesick for the ground, which is out of character for him. He usually loves flying. This has all changed, seeing as the sky has turned out not so great for hiding from massive douche bags.

"Mark," Chris says. "Mark."

Mark half turns on the spot, indicating that he is listening.

"Mark, why is Parker in our helicopter?"

"Because it was cheaper to just pick him up," Mark says, reasonably. He points out the front windscreen for the benefit of the co-pilot.

"It was that or swim," Sean says cheerily.

Chris slides as far away from Parker as is practical in a small aircraft, wishing he'd bothered to engineer those pterosaur-shark hybrids Dustin had wanted so much.

"Mark," he says again, meanly, making up his mind to pull his ace card. "Does Eduardo know?"

"Do I know what?"  
The helicopter touches down, and the co-pilot springs out the side door at once. He looks pleased to have something to do, and takes to fetching and carrying the luggage onto the tarmac. Chris has never seen anyone this eager to do heavy lifting.

“Hey, guys!”

Dustin is sprinting through the shallows of the waterfall that pools picturesquely around the helipad. He looks positively delirious to be back on the island. He is clutching something tiny and reptilian. Too bad his good mood won’t last long, Chris thinks gloomily.

Eduardo has managed to untangle himself from the straps and bags he was sleeping on. It sounds like he has caught sight of Parker.

“What,” he starts, throwing one of Dustin’s rucksacks across the cabin, “the fuck is going on?”

“I would like to point out that I am an innocent party,” Chris cuts in hastily, before throwing himself out the door.

Dustin catches him awkwardly with one arm. “I’m going to take a wild guess and ask you, what did Mark do this time?”

They dodge a small avalanche of luggage, apparently victims of Eduardo’s anger.

“Believe it or not, he snuck Sean Parker into our helicopter.”

 

\---

 

Sean is playing it cool. It isn’t everyday that an opportunity like this presents itself. Or rather, re-represents itself. The genius Mark Zuckerberg, fully bankrolled, no controlling interests, total freedom of research, and apparently not all that mad about the whole defecting thing.

He’d skipped out on the Winklevosses without notice almost as soon as the Zuck had txted him.  Actually, they probably think he is still in the lab working on their Tyrannosaurus. Fat chance. He has the half finished embryo in his carry on. All it needs is some certified perfect Zuckerberg DNA code.

Traitor?

Sean prefers the term opportunist.

Eduardo Saverin, on the other hand, appears to be losing his shit. He has his hands buried in his hair, and he is pacing, despite having to bend himself almost in half to clear the ceiling of the cabin on every circuit.

“You do remember that he sold you out once, right?” Eduardo doesn’t seem able to control his pitch. His voice breaks girlishly on the last word, and Sean has to stifle his chuckle.

Eduardo turns on him, “Who the fuck do you think you are, Parker? You left, that’s it. Is it just me or do neither of you seem aware of a little place called Winklevoss Park Resort, barely ten miles away from us? Founded, oh right, a month after you,” he pauses to make some agonised faces of rage and a couple of aborted hand movements, “after you defected to the guys who are now our direct competitors, you asshole.”

Sean shrugged, “Hey, that’s business, Wardo. And if I remember rightly, you-”

“You do _not_ call me that.” Eduardo screams across the cabin.

“Wardo-“ Mark says, finally.

“What can you possibly say to explain this, Mark?”

Mark rubs his cheek with his hand, sighing. “Sean, get out.”

Sean steps out, smirking. It looks like he is on the ins again.

“Hello, boys,” he says, waving brightly at Moscovitz and Hughes. “Oh, now, that is a lovely Compy you have there...” he says, reaching out for Dustin’s little Procompsognathus friend.

“Hands off, Parker.”

 

\---

 

“Wardo-“ Mark tries again. “It’s business. They poached him, we poached him back. They’re years behind us, and their sponsors are demanding that they open immediately, monetize their half coded dinosaurs. We’re the better choice, that’s all.”

“He’ll go back. They’ll offer him more; he’ll take Chris’s research back with him this time. You can’t risk it, Mark.”

“They won’t take him back.” Mark smiles in that peculiar way that always means that he is certain he’s won the game before it has even ended. He steps in close, curls his fingers in Eduardo’s shirt front. He leans in to whisper the sentence, breathing it into Wardo’s lips, like he can’t believe in the fact well enough yet to say it in his usual forthright manner. “He brought me their t-rex, Wardo.”

At this distance Eduardo can see that Mark's pupils are dilated. He is clearly excited about his coup against the Winklevoss Resort, holding Eduardo's gaze effortlessly, still breathing softly against his mouth.

Wardo's lips part of their own accord, the intensity of the moment urging him down a road he isn't too certain about. He registers vaguely that it would be rather nice if Mark would just lean into him a little more and-

"Oh, wow, awkward," Dustin says, throwing his hands over his eyes in horror.

Eduardo wrenches his body away from Mark on reflex. "It's not what-" he starts lamely.

Mark drops his hands to his sides, suddenly all business, kneeling and reaching into his laptop bag to rummage for one of his three jailbroken smartphones.

"Uh, anyway," Dustin says, peeking through the gaps between his fingers. "Would you guys come out of the helicopter? Myrtle bit Sean, and Wardo is the only person I know who carries around a first aid kit. As big a dick as he is, I don't need any Jurassic Park flavoured guilt on my conscience."

"I've warned you about the Spielberg cracks, Moscovitz. Expendable. Keep this word in your vocabulary."

"Sure, whatever. Come watch Sean squirt blood all over the place."

"Is Myrtle one of our interns?" Eduardo asks hopefully, slinging his bag over a shoulder. He takes the opportunity to tuck the bottom of his dress shirt back into his pants too.

"Myrtle is one of the tamer Compy," Mark explains, shedding no greater light on the subject, despite Eduardo's 'aaaand?' hand gesture.

"You'll see her in a second, Wardo, you'll love her. She's Chris's answer to the rat infestation."

“Then it sounds like she’s got the right idea already,” Eduardo mutters.

 

 

\---

 

Eduardo somehow ends up not only facilitating Sean's patch up job, but also actually bandaging the bite. Apparently his first aid training qualifies him as the only person around able to wrap a glorified band aid around Sean Parker's mildly punctured index finger. Dustin is snapping pxts with his iPhone as if it is some kind of occasion, and Sean is being uncharacteristically irritable about the photo opportunity.

"Is it really necessary to use this much iodine?" Sean complains bitterly.

"Yes." Wardo tells him, cruelly up-ending the bottle over the wound.

"Could you maybe tie the bandage a little looser?" He says, eying the purplish tip of his finger.

"Absolutely not," Dustin says. He has given Myrtle free range of his shoulders, and she is clinging to his shirt, her litle talons hooked into the cotton, utterly fascinated with his ears.

"Why doesn't she bite you?" Eduardo asks, squeezing Sean's finger through the bandage.

"Fucking - ow, Saverin!"

"Shut up, Parker." Dustin says, happily, offering his fingers up to Myrtle. She ignores them and sticks her tiny thin tongue into his ear for a second. "She knows who her mommies are, that's all. Mark did program her DNA, if you remember. She'll probably like you too, Wardo."

Eduardo reaches out a balled up hand, figuring he can risk his knuckles. "I thought you said in the reports that this species is out of control, breeding like crazy?"

"Attacking other species in groups? Yeah. They're vicious little bastards when they're in a pack."

"So where is her pack?"

Dustin shrugs. "They get on fine on their own too. They only gather when they hunt big game or when they feel distressed, and start squealing for back up."

He gives Sean a look, "You should know better than to touch other people's dinosaurs, Parker. Didn't you take Rearing 588? With Professor Sandberg?"

"Sorry," Sean mutters, nursing his hand. "I was somewhat preoccupied in that lab. Maybe you didn't notice our professor's insanely fabulous booty."

"I am going to pretend I didn't hear that," Chris says pleasantly, turning up out of the blue, startling Sean. He hands Wardo a roll of US bills, tightly bound in a rubber band. "I gave them a tip. I hope you don't mind. I think they needed it."

Wardo nods, embarrassed, "No, I agree. Thanks, man." He tucks the money into his inner jacket pocket, ignoring Sean's hopefully quirked eyebrows.

Chris untangles Myrtle from her perch on Dustin's shoulder with practiced hands.

"Trust me," he says, nodding at Wardo's hands, "I made her. Well, half of her, anyway."

Sean makes vomiting noises into his folded arms.

Eduardo hold his hands out obediently, tucking his thumbs in nervously, and Chris drops the fledgling dinosaur into them like it's nothing out of the ordinary. To his wonder, the Procompsognathus rolls in his palms, tail thrashing and head swaying as if it is having a fit.

"Shit, is it okay?"

"She's so happy that she's freaking out!" Dustin sounds unbearably proud.

"That's not...a normal dinosaur behaviour, but Mark wrote her, so you have to expect the odd anomaly, I guess." Chris allows, shaking his head. He pulls out his blackberry and makes a couple of notes.

"That is wack," Sean says, staring at the compy. "You guys remember fifteen minutes ago when she tried to rip my fingers off, right?"

Myrtle discovers Eduardo's suit sleeves, and accepts the challenge, scaling them in seconds. She loses her grip at his shoulder and Eduardo reflexively catches her against his neck with both hands.

Mark somehow chooses this moment to finally step out of the helicopter, sliding his phone into the pocket of his sweatpants. He looks at Wardo's armful of affectionate carnivore and nods approvingly.

"The mother clause should definitely go into all the species from now," he tells Chris, "Wardo should probably help you hatch them in the lab whenever he can spare the time, too."

Mark insists that Eduardo be allowed to carry Myrtle back to the labs. He has little interest in touching his creations beyond a brief examination once Chris has given them form. Mark’s passion lies in the act of creation itself, and the observation of interactions forthwith. He’s not into cuddling the animals.

“Are they all like this?” Wardo asks, rubbing the base of Myrtle’s tail as she chirps happily.

“Tiny? Cuddly? Weak for tall, dark, Brazilian men?” Dustin jokes, leading their little group across the freshly planted grounds, hands stuffed contentedly in his pockets.

“No.” Mark answers. “I wrote the mother clause-“ Sean laughs again, ”-into every species, but Compy are already naturally playful. The velociraptors, for example, will give you more respect than they’d afford most of their prey, but you obviously shouldn’t approach them expecting to be friends.”

Eduardo knows this is a fact, rather than a challenge, but it’s hard to remember to apply Mark-logic when most people would say the same things out of spite. He gives into jealously momentarily, picking up on the same fact they’ve all been musing over:

“But you play with the raptors,” Eduardo says.

Chris has to admire the way that he manages to eradicate almost all traits of bitterness from his speech.

Mark shrugs, stepping off the beaten path for a moment to crouch by the nearest flowerbed. “I hand reared them from birth,” he says, stepping back quickly, “I taught them some traditional hunting algorithms as children. They see that I come and go as I like. They can sense that I hold some power over their existence.”

Mark reaches for Eduardo’s free hand. Eduardo mutely allows him to take it up. He rubs his fingers over Eduardo’s knuckles, tracing the hard edges of his family ring, his face carefully devoid of emotion.

“Feed her,” he says, showing Eduardo the live cricket in his other hand, “Compy show affection by giving gifts, and feeding one another.”

“I hate bugs,” Wardo complains, but he accepts the cricket with the hand Mark has been holding, pinching it gingerly between forefinger and thumb.

They reach the grand entrance as a group, and Chris and Dustin (well, Chris mostly) have the good sense to hustle Sean into the building ahead of the others.

In the lobby, Sean whistles and exclaims over the life-sized replica of a tyrannosaurus skeleton, and predictably homes in on the complimentary buffet laid out for staff benefit. This is one of the outrageous expenses that Eduardo has managed to agree on with Mark and Dustin.

“Bring them food, and they will come,” Wardo had said under his breath, salvaging dishes from their offices, all of which he could remember personally preparing for Mark at some point or another. He’d signed off on the outrageous catering bill, thinking that even if Mark managed to scavenge a single meal a day from the lobby the staff could justify the waste by all eating from the same table, and then distributing the waste amongst the appropriate species in their charge.

Dustin is unashamedly spying on Mark and Eduardo. “They were totally about to get their shit together before,” he informs Chris, craning his neck as if it will help him see through the stone wall that is blocking all but Mark’s elbow from sight.

Chris looks doubtful, but he squints down Dustin’s line of sight nonetheless.

“This is weird,” he says, finally, after they’ve watched Mark’s elbow jiggle for about thirty seconds.

Sean comes to stand just behind them, obnoxiously licking his fingers clean of the cream cake he has just decimated. “What’s with the spying, kids? I thought they were already fucking?” he says, wiping his mouth.

“Hey, Chris, could you spot me? Have I got anything on my face?”

Chris waves a middle finger in his general direction. “Just, shut up, Sean,” he says.

“Jesus, you guys are so uptight. I know it’s hard to accept that your parents have sex, but this is getting weird.”

Dustin turns to fix him with a dirty look. “Can I-?”

“Not until Mark has his t-rex.” Chris reminds him sorrowfully.

 

\---

  
Eduardo has fed animals before. Usually farm animals, and usually stuff like hay and disgusting smelling pellets or lettuce. He figures it could be worse with dinosaurs. His first experience of feeding time could have been tossing chunks of flesh to a Spinosaurus or something equally horrifying. Holding the cricket still as Myrtle gnaws on its head is hardly the stuff of nightmares.

“So these guys hunt bugs most of the time?” Eduardo asks, smiling as the compy manages to tear her half of the cricket loose. She swallows it greedily, and Eduardo offers her the rest. Myrtle takes it from his fingers delicately and crouches in the crook of his elbow to pull it apart.

Mark takes the end of his hoodie drawstring out of his mouth, shrugging. “They eat everything. Chris has been tracking the packs via CCTV and microchips, and they seem to be fairly indiscriminate in their habits. Insects, rodents, sometimes fish around the river. Dustin said he caught some in the botanist’s garden out back, eating fallen fruit.”

“Wow,” Eduardo says, lacking anything else to say.

“Do you prefer the compy?” Mark asks, incongruously. “They were good starters, but I’ve programmed a number of superior species since their initial synthesis. There should be a few good hatchlings today.”

“Uh, I’ve never actually met any of the others,” Eduardo admits. “Dustin would come and tell me about them, and I saw the progress reports, but I never...” He trails off, uncomfortable under Mark’s incredulous stare.

“I thought you liked dinosaurs.” Mark says.

“I do! I mean, I really liked the idea of dinosaurs.” Eduardo says defensively. Myrtle chirps, done with her cricket. Eduardo absently rests his free hand over her, and she nuzzles it, settling into the loose folds of his sleeve.

“The idea of dinosaurs,” Mark repeats.

Eduardo wishes he could kick himself without waking Myrtle. “What I mean is...your idea was amazing. I believed in it. I believed in you.”

“Like how you believe in it turning a profit.” Mark says quietly.

“No!”

Myrtle chirrups softly.

Eduardo covers her with his hand again. “No,” he says. “I didn’t do this to make money, Mark. I did this so you could have this.” He jerks his head at the surroundings. “This was your dream. I wanted to make it real. And I have.” Eduardo stares at Mark’s sneakers, praying that his face isn’t as pink as he feels it might be. “So, would you please show me your dinosaurs?”

The scuffed sneakers remain in place for a few seconds before they finally shuffle away. Eduardo looks up to find that Mark is holding the front entrance open for him, the hint of a smile around his lips. “I’ll give you the grand tour.” Mark says magnanimously. “But you’ll have to surrender that compy to Dustin’s department. And Sean needs to come with us.”

Sean sidles over as they step in. “Just us three? That sounds cozy.”

Eduardo makes a visible effort to pretend he doesn’t resent Sean Parker with every fibre of his being. “Dustin, can you take Myrtle?”

“Yup.”

“Is she going back to her herd?”

“Pack.” Mark and Sean say in unison.

“Okay, pack. Her pack?”

“Chris can track her down for you again later.” Dustin smirks. “If you’re worried about her.”

“And if he can’t, one compy isn’t too different from the next.” Sean interjects; turning to wink at Chris like he’d made a super secret geneticist injoke.

“She’s micro-chipped.” Chris tells Eduardo, ignoring Sean. “See you in the labs.”

Eduardo nods and follows Mark, who has already crossed the room and is holding open a door for them.

“I’ll show you your office, and then we can go see some hatchlings.” Mark says.

The three of them walk through as a group, Sean struggling to insinuate himself alongside Mark as they walk down the hall. The walls are glass, occasionally punctuated with steel panels that Eduardo remembers vaguely from blueprints as housing mostly refrigeration units. He also remembers the glass costing an absolute fortune. Mark had wanted transparency though, a free and open academic space where he can see every aspect of his park in progress. Eduardo can understand that desire for control.

So many people assume that Mark is a misanthrope - that he likes to be alone above all else – when in fact this isn’t true at all. Mark loves to be surrounded by people; preferably people of his own choosing who understand that being with someone didn’t necessarily mean talking to them. If Mark wants that kind of quiet company, Eduardo is willing to supply it, whether in person, or at the rate of four thousand US dollars per pane.

They walk past pane after pane, scientists and interns that Eduardo vaguely recognised busily at work behind the glass. Most of them look intent on their instruments. Others look happy, to Eduardo’s pleasure. Some are women Eduardo recognises from Chris’s numerous study groups at Harvard. They glance up through their glass walls as they pass and most smile or wave at him.

“Ohhhh, yeah.” Sean waves back at every single one. Eduardo makes a note to warn as many of his former classmates as possible.

“This is your office.” Mark says, pressing his hand against a semi-transparent panel on the wall.

Eduardo lifts an eyebrow. He doesn’t remember requisitioning a private office space. He’d assumed he’d just clear some space in the clerical or admin sectors. The glass sectors. Not this...

“I set up your new computer. The network is fully operational, and all your files should be in order.”

Mark shrugs, holding the door open for Eduardo to enter. “The panel will only respond to your print. Your intern’s. And mine. Unless you change that.”

Eduardo looks up from the top of the line desk, already stocked with pens and accounting books, inbox already stacked with a small sheath of dog-eared, and chemical-stained requisition forms.

Mark is staring at him, something expectant in his gaze.

Eduardo face feels warm. “Thanks, Mark. It’s- It’s great.”

Mark nods, walking out of the office. Eduardo gives his perfectly ergonomic desk chair a gentle push before he follows.

Sean is leaning against the glass panel adjacent to the office, doing his best to communicate pick up lines through exuberant sign language. There are two chemists and an assortment of interns on the other side, most of them studiously ignoring him. Eduardo sees that one of the senior scientists is Christy Lee, formerly head of Harvard’s Membrane Biology Club and lauded host of a number of infamous Virology Dinner Club parties. She looks up, as if feeling Eduardo’s eyes on her, and smiles at him in recognition.

Sean redoubles his efforts, waving at Christy and making the international gesture for ‘call me’. She lifts an eyebrow in bemusement, looking at least slightly interested. Sean is encouraged. “How do I open the doors, Mark?”

“You don’t.” Mark says wryly.

He puts his hand on Eduardo’s arm, pulling gently. Eduardo waves at Christy briefly and follows Mark. His grip on his forearm is firm, but Eduardo finds he doesn’t mind being personally guided through the labs. They only pass one more storage lockup -

 

(“Stationery is in there, apparently.” Mark says casually, glancing at Eduardo with an almost nervous tic to his movements.

“How would you know?” Eduardo laughs.

“I memorised the blueprints weeks ago,” Mark says.

“Huh.”)

 

\- and they’re suddenly in front of a vast glass wall. There are at least thirty people inside, notably Chris and a small entourage grouped around him and a low oval shaped table that is glowing a warm friendly yellow. He appears to be instructing the group, from the way he is pointing at them and then to the table.

“Perfect timing.” Mark says. His fingers squeeze Eduardo’s wrist momentarily. “Press the panel.”

Eduardo does, unsure of the pressure it requires – apparently barely a brush, judging by the speed at which the glass slides open before them.

Sean just manages to catch up. He’s slipping his iPhone into the pocket of his sports coat, looking a little more smug than usual. Eduardo supposes he has managed to get Christy’s number. He is impressed, if a little frightened by Sean’s tenacity. He’d heard most guys who had approached Christy Lee at Harvard had been scathingly rejected. Sean must have something going for him after all.

“The hatchery!” Sean says. He sounds awed.

Mark half-smirks at that. “So, how does it compare to the Winklevoss setup?”

“Oh, baby, baby.” Sean says, stepping over the threshold and slowly spinning in place. “Zuckerberg, I am going to build you a _pack_ of Tyrannosaurus in here.”

“Good.” Mark says, as if that settles everything. “That’s your workbench.” He nods down the length of the room.

Sean hums happily, and starts untangling himself from his sidebag.

Eduardo watches for a few moments as Sean starts plonking down weird stoppered test tubes the size of his fist, all with curly little creatures inside. They are perfectly still, suspended in yellow fluid, and it takes Eduardo a moment to realise that these are Sean Parker’s ultimate contribution – the price he was paying to buy into their as-yet-unnamed park.

 

(“Jurassic Park.” Dustin says stubbornly, for about the hundredth time.

“No,” sighs Chris. His hand holding the uncapped marker poised droops a little – obviously there is nothing better coming forthwith.

Mark frowns, still typing. “That’s not even accurate. I don’t want it to sound _stupid._ ” He says, not even having to look at Dustin to project the barb perfectly.

“Prehistoric Park?” Chris suggests, off hand.

Mark hmms, unimpressed. He hits the return key a couple of times. “Wardo.” Mark says.

Eduardo looks up from his lapful of paperwork. He is chewing the nib of a red pen in between tightly circling the digits that flow endlessly down the pages. When he looks up his lips are stained red from the ink. “Sorry, what?” he frowns, looking expectantly at Chris.

Chris taps the whiteboard. “Names. What do you want to call this place? Please do not say ‘Fantasy Island’, no matter what Dustin promises to do for you.”

Dustin drops back into his (Chris’s) desk chair with a melodramatic sigh. The force of his drop propels him halfway across the slick linoleum floor.

“Uh,” Eduardo glances back down at his figures, “Um, I don’t know, guys. I guess something to do with dinosaurs. Mark should--” he grimaces, and scrubs out a misplaced circle, “yeah, whatever Mark thinks is good.”

“Are you kidding?” Chris deadpans at the same time as Dustin howls in frustration –

“Whatever Mark thinks up will _suck_ , Wardo, come on!”

“I don’t know,” Eduardo mumbles, jotting something down the margins, “just let me get this done first.”

Dustin spins around the workbench towards the collection of dinosaur figurines he gave Chris for his birthday (to this date Dustin has played with them so often that the interns pretty much assume they are his, so in a fit of good will Chris surrendered them in all but name and storage space).

Chris caps his marker and watches Mark, who hasn’t typed a stroke since Eduardo started to speak. He isn’t great at Mark!expressions (at least not as good as Eduardo. When Eduardo is looking for them), but he knows that this one is mostly made up of sadness, and maybe a little resentment.

Chris hasn’t seen this face since the day Mark came back to their dorm halfway through the hour he would usually be at 744 DNA PROGRAMMING: Animals and Reptiles (Wardo says it is creepy how Chris always seems to remember everyone’s schedules. Chris says it is weirder that Mark can get away with handing in a DNA profile of Reptar for 60% of his grade) clutching a wad of notepaper before promptly locking Billy out of their shared bedroom.

Billy lost three hours of valuable study time (more like bong-time, Chris pointed out, trying to prevent them losing any more of their bond on replacing doors) until Eduardo manages to coax his way in with the aid of a six pack and forty minutes on the phone talking about how many financiers he’d mentioned Mark to at his Harvard Investment Association’s black tie event.

Chris watches Mark watch Wardo.

Then Mark looks down, types a lone bracket, pauses, and clatters out a line of code. Then another, and another. His lips ease back into their perfectly straight line of absolute concentration. Chris thinks Mark is probably writing something that will turn out amazing on an unprecedented level. This is what Mark tends to do when he gets upset.

Once Eduardo went out on a date instead of attending weekly Mario Cart night, and Mark locked himself in for sixteen hours and wrote CourseMatch.

This is how they end up running an unnamed park. And why every single creature Mark manages to breathe life into lives for one reason, and one reason only – to get the attention of Eduardo Saverin.

Chris figures that Mark would scowl at his explanation, but he can’t deny that this is what the script does.

Chris watches the first hatchlings weep and wither and die, longing for their pre-programmed mother. It doesn’t matter what he feeds them, it doesn’t matter how long Dustin pets and plays with them. They can’t figure it out until Chris calls Mark, desperate for some explanation, and Mark admits that he needs to alter one of the scripts.

He flies in personally the next day, lines their artificially warmed pen with a shirt Dustin does a double take at. It doesn’t do much – they stop cheeping so desperately all the time, and nestle into the fabric instead. They still refuse to feed, and every last compy in the set perishes, pining.

Chris feels sick, physically sick, carrying them out to the garden for burial. There is no way Dustin can handle destroying the little bodies in the industrial furnace that has just been finished. It was better for him to dig for a couple of hours.

“I’m sorry.” Mark says, back in the labs, so quiet that Chris barely hears him.

No one tells Eduardo about that batch. Chris over-projects the prices of some of his own resources to hide the costs.

He walks in on Dustin on the phone a week later, hunched up at the back of the hatchery, his voice low, darker than he can ever remember Dustin sounding. “----Mark. Yeah- I know. No.” A pause, a grunt of grudging agreement. “They’re only babies, Mark, they don’t know how to deal with that kind of – that depth – fuck--”.

Chris walks out as silently as he enters. He slides the door panel shut and sits down in front of it to ward off the skeleton crew of interns. He has enough capability on his smart phone to work on a couple of chemical problems without his lab instruments.

Things are touch and go for a couple of weeks as the new eggs form and Mark transmits his rewritten DNA sequences.  They hatch, and they instinctively nest in the same ragged old shirt. Dustin looks grim for a few days, and the interns (just Alice, Natalie and Viktor at that point) have so much trouble feeding them that Chris has to pitch in and run four hour feeding cycles with Dustin. But they stop pining by the sixth day and before they knew it, the compy are alert and just about capable of hunting on their own. Alice literally weeps in relief. Chris can’t deny he has to wipe at his own face too.

Mark immediately sends them more ambitious sequences. And a hoodie, one Chris has seen a lot of at Harvard. The hatchlings aren’t dying. He can turn a blind eye to the complexes Mark is instilling in what Dustin is almost unironically referring to as Mark’s children.

It isn’t fair to Wardo, Chris, thinks. But he thinks it quietly, because they are making _dinosaurs_ and Mark is doing amazing things, and he is with his best friends every day, and all they all want now was for Eduardo to look up from his saintliness for five damn minutes and see that Mark is trying to build him an Eden for his very own.)

 

“Wardo.”

Eduardo looks up from Sean’s arrangements. Chris is standing right in front of him. He has donned a stained and spotted white coat, and he is looking more mad scientist than Eduardo has ever seen him look before. Also tired - and incongruously – happy. Like he has reached the end of a long journey.

“Come and see the eggs.” Chris says. He nods at the group around the glowing table.

They (interns and a couple of biochemists, like Chris –Eduardo guesses) look expectant, and happy, faces glowing as bright as their hatching table.

He walks over, and sees Mark behind the scientists, leaning against the glass wall that separates the hatchery from some other lab, watching his approach. Eduardo averts his eyes, looks at the eggs instead.  
They are clustered together, each one big enough to fill his open hands. They are creamy blue, although Eduardo doesn’t know if this is something he should attribute to Chris’s department. They are nestled in down and some kind of fleece –

“Is that my hoodie?” Eduardo asks, incredulous.

“Mr. Saverin, we haven’t met but it’s a real honour-” Eduardo finds himself shaking hands with Natalie, who is smiling really really hard, and sneaking glances at Mark for some reason.

“Seriously, you have no idea how pleased we are to finally have you here.” Natalie continues, smile beginning to turn into a manic grimace as she steers him towards the table. Eduardo can’t help but note that she has dark circles under her eyes. He thinks of Chris’s face, and peers at Viktor and Alice. They look deathly once he gets past the ecstatically happy expressions.

Obviously Natalie is distracting him from confronting Mark over the inexplicable sweater theft, but he files the team’s exhaustion away as something to look into as well.

Eduardo also doesn’t miss the way Chris is side eying Mark as he comes over to slap Eduardo on the back.

“You can touch them, Wardo.”

Eduardo slots away his suspicions for now, and instead takes in the eggs, memorising the way some of them are so translucent he can see the shapes of the hatchlings inside. Some of them are wriggling. They shake a little. He looks at Chris, gaze questioning.

Chris shakes his head, “They won’t hatch for a couple of days, I think. They’re not active enough yet.” He hesitates for a second. “Please touch them, Wardo.”

Eduardo frowns at the crack in his voice.

“Okay,” he says, reaching out hesitantly. He brushes the nearest egg with his fingertips. He is surprised to find that it is warm – smooth - but warm. It’s disconcerting. It vibrates as his fingers leave its surface, and everyone around the table makes a sound of pleasure. Natalie actually claps. Mark is smirking. Dustin has crept in and he is smiling fit to burst on Chris’s right.

Eduardo isn’t sure what he’s done to make everyone so glad. The afternoon has been very confusing. Someone has pulled out a lone bottle of beer and it is making its way around the lab. Even Chris takes a swig, wiping condensation onto his lab coat self-consciously as he passes it to Viktor.

Dustin is spinning all the interns in turn, warbling “Big momma has arrived!”

“No, no, no.” Chris says, fruitlessly attempting to escape from Dustin’s creative dance moves.

Eduardo accepts the beer bottle offered to him numbly, sips from it and shakes it when he finds only a mouthful left.

“Sorry.”

Eduardo looks up. Mark is next to him, one hand stuffed in his pocket, the other outstretched to take back the empty.

“Thought there was more.” Mark says. “In the bottle.” He ends up pulling the beer out of Eduardo’s hands.

Lost for where to put it now, he offers it to Dustin as he sweeps past. Dustin snatches it, his grin swiftly transforming into a pout as he juggles the diminished weight of the bottle.

“Mark is a meanie,” he accuses, from across the room, trading Viktor to Natalie for Alice.

Mark just shrugs. “Wardo,” he says instead.

Eduardo looks at him expectantly.

Mark is staring at the hatching table. “Touch that one.” He says. He nods at one egg in particular.

Eduardo hadn’t spotted it before. But now that he’s looking at them, he realises that not all the eggs are identical. Most of them are fairly big, blue spheres. No one is exactly the same as the next. However, there is a truly odd one out in the midst. All the other eggs lean against it gently, as if keeping it company with their proximity. The fleece and down is heaped high here too, wrapped close around the base and topping the egg like a little feathered snow cap.

“The little one?” Eduardo asks, drawn down Mark’s sightline immediately. He finds himself hovering over the edge of the table. Mark, he finds, is at his elbow, approval glinting in his eyes.

Eduardo reaches for it, having to lean. He picks it up gently. It fits his palm easily, tiny like a chicken egg, only blue. He stands upright quickly, quick enough to catch Mark’s eyes lingering on his back, on his-

Eduardo flushes and concentrates on the egg in his palm. He cups it nervously, wondering if maybe he should blow on it to keep it warm. It vibrates gently, not so much spooking him as sending a nervous thrill down his spine. There is a tiny unborn dinosaur in his hands. Totally dependent on him not fumbling or dropping him.

Or her, he amends, thinking of Myrtle fondly.

“That one’s special.” Mark says.

Eduardo looks up, offering him the egg carefully.

Mark shakes his head but puts a hand over the top of it for a moment, long pale fingers brushing over Eduardo’s.

Eduardo thinks of Harvard, struck and embarrassed within a split second by – just how often he’d touched Mark over their years there. He’d - Mark hadn’t touched him back then.

Why did it feel so different now that he is?

“Why?” He manages to say, letting Mark guide his hands back to the warm hatching table.

They tuck the egg back into the nest, Eduardo scratching up down and patting it over the top of the egg, Mark pulling the fleece from Eduardo’s hoodie around the shell.

Mark shrugs. “You’ll see.”

Eduardo stares.

“You should get some sleep.” Mark says. He plucks a feather out of the gelled hair behind Eduardo’s ear. He lets it float to the floor. “Chris will show you to your quarters.” He is stroking the shell of Eduardo’s ear with one sure finger.

“Oh.” Eduardo says. It is barely six. “Goodnight?”

“Night, Wardo.” Mark says. He folds both his hands into his hoodie pocket and leaves through a door at the far end of the lab.

Eduardo stares after him, hand going up to touch his ear.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

Eduardo sleeps like the dead the first few nights. His quarters aren’t exactly spacious but they are certainly state of the art. It isn’t dissimilar to staying in a hotel room or even an incredibly clean, new version of the Kirkland dorm suites.

The one godsend is the air conditioning unit. Eduardo is theoretically used to the tropical heat of Brazil and Florida, but it seems like his sojourn in Harvard has taken the edge off his tolerance for temperate climes.  Unfortunately the remote for said air conditioning is like something out of Mark’s Star Trek collection. There are so many buttons and all the little indicative pictures pretty much look like blobs or illustrations of arrows doing creepy things to boxes and circles and other arrows.

In the end Eduardo has to call Dustin -

 

(on his cell, because he doesn’t totally get how the internal phone system works yet. This is something he is going to have to quietly quiz his intern on...when he figures out who his intern is. And stops said intern from taking all the files out of his inbox and completing them before Eduardo even manages to get into his office in the morning.

Apparently Mark has set up twenty-four hour shift rotations for admin as well as scientists, an accomplishment so ludicrous he could only believe it of Mark.  This level of persuasion or dedication – or fear – is something unprecedented. If word gets out, Mark will probably start getting some pretty hefty HR management offers.

Eduardo is a little uncomfortable about not being able to find his name on any roster or timesheet in admin, or the labs, so he tries to keep to the twelve hour, seven til seven working day he had (allegedly, but not actually) adhered to back in Cambridge.)

 

– anyhow, he has to call Dustin and trade him a case of beer written off on the accounts in exchange for him having a permanent marker colouring-in session with the buttons essential to not actually melting in the excessive humidity.

Eduardo isn’t sure how Mark is managing to wear hoodies without suffering heatstroke. Eduardo has already reverted to linen and silk despite Dustin’s taunts.

Chris is borrowing shirts by day four, but Eduardo has already put in an order with Hugo Boss for a shipment in Chris and Dustin’s sizes. Dustin is cheap and as much as he loves t-shirts with sloths on the front (which may actually be Mark’s t-shirts sometimes, and Eduardo isn’t sure how that makes him feel), the combined pressures of heat, free clothes and Chris leading by example are totally going to drive him into the arms of breathable fabrics.

Plus Eduardo can’t bear to see any more of his shirts getting stretched out, best friends or not.

Sean, on the other hand, needs no such fashion help. Eduardo knows exactly where Sean Parker’s Prada comes from. Winklevoss bribes and Mark’s success. Which translates somewhat directly to _Eduardo’s pockets_.

So he tries not to even look at Sean’s shiny Hermes Oxfords. Which is somewhat difficult in the lobby-slash-cafeteria when Sean insists on standing beside him as he methodically chews through cold luncheon meat, a couple of regrettably dry samosas (Dustin proposes, after trying the coleslaw, that eating at the park is like eating at a family member’s birthday party in some respects. There is always that one dish you can’t help but reach for, and subsequently can’t help but regret consuming) and a bowl of canjica. When he sees the serving bowl on the table he immediately thinks of Mark. It is silly. Perhaps someone in catering considered it a necessity at breakfast (Eduardo has certainly missed it since leaving his parent’s home). No one else touches the canjica though, and the next day there is another steaming tureen on the table.

Eduardo takes to grabbing a bowl at meals when the finances are frustrating, when his intern keeps deferring to Mark,

(“Mr. Zuckerberg instructed me to order another bank of servers for the pterosaur programming.”

“But, I never signed off on that. That’s another twenty thousand plus. I told him he would have to slow down and wait for the space to open up on the servers we already have!”

“But, Mr. Zuckerberg already had it shipped-”

“....Excuse me.”)

\- and now when Sean Parker stalks him.

“I’m just saying, I could hook you guys up with some Prada. Wouldn’t that be great? Actually, it would look amazing in the next shoot I have lined up with Popular Science. They want to do a feature on how I defected back to you guys, with Mark stealing me with his helicopter and you throwing suitcases at me. They said they’d _love_ to publish a picture of any scars.”

Sean shows the nearest intern the almost invisible puncture scars on his finger.

“I think their angle is to portray me as the new Jeff Goldblum. But way cooler, obviously. And the pay is great. More than enough to get that new Louis Voitton satchel that Peter just emailed me. Except they’re just going to give it to me as a gift, as long as I mention them in the interview. Do you think Mark wants anything? I’ll ask if they have hoodies.”

Eduardo spoons more canjica into his mouth, and chews it careful and slow. He thinks of how many dinosaur embryos Parker could smuggle into the fabulous new Louis Voitton satchel. He thinks about how many of Sean’s severed body parts could be fit into the fabulous new Loius Voitton satchel.

Sean eventually gives up on the chatting and sits down opposite Eduardo.

“The canjica is nice, huh,” he says, tearing open a soft wholemeal roll.

“Excuse me?” Eduardo says, pounding himself on the chest as the porridge slips down his windpipe.

“Did I say it wrong? Shit. Can-JAYY-ica? Canji _KAH_?” He amends, gesturing at Eduardo’s bowl with an incline of his head.

“Just...say it like before,” Eduardo says, grimacing. “Do you make a habit of eating Brazilian cuisine?”

“Nope. But the caterers wouldn’t let me try any when I dropped in for breakfast this morning. Said it was ordered especially for you. They make fantastic French toast if you’re up early enough, by the way. Gabriella is a fine woman, she’ll set you up with a stool in the kitchens, just mention my name. Not that you’d need to, sounds like you already have them all wrapped around your little finger in there.”

Eduardo frowns, confused.

He makes a point of poking his head into the kitchens the following morning, which are buzzing with cooks and kitchen hands. A tiny Latina woman bustles over and shakes his hand fiercely, to his surprise.

“Ms. Gabriella?” He guesses slowly, smiling when she nods so hard that her dark bun of hair bounces.

“Mr. Saverin,” she says in accented English.

A tall boy clutching a massive mixing bowl approaches her nervously, and she peers into it and nods imperiously to him to continue stirring whatever it is.

“Habla Espanol, Mr. Saverin?” she asks, hopeful.

“Uh – a little. Hablo Español mal. Muy mal. Terrible. ” Eduardo smiles. “Por favor, llámeme Eduardo.”

She cackles, and slaps her hands on her apron.

“You are very sweet,” she says, in Spanish. “Your young man said as much. Now sit down. I will have that stupid boy Benjamin prepare your _canjica_ and you will tell me how to feed your Mr. Zuckerberg.”

Eduardo tries to act like the professional financier and accountant that his Masters degree insists that he is. This means of a lot of early starts. He stops by the kitchens most mornings around six to pick up something to tide him over. Gabriella isn’t always free to harangue him about his early starts, her hands coated with flour, or swatting poor Benjamin as he burns a grill full of eggs. She manages to sniff at him just as disapprovingly from across the kitchen as he takes satsumas and bread from the baskets and trays on their way into the lobby cafeteria.

He has a feeling that if she had her way, he’d be relegated to bed until mid morning, and then presented with a hearty breakfast in bed. It is an uncomfortable thought.

Despite his best efforts, work is slow. It seems that Mark now tends to simply tell whichever intern is closest what he wants ordered or purchased. By the time Eduardo sifts through his inbox in the morning, interns from the night shift with Mark have already processed most accounts, and written them up just as well could be expected from any finance or economics major.

By lunch, Eduardo is reduced to checking his email -

(

  * Christy and the chemists are starting a dinner club;
  * Dustin wants to know who took the Allosaurus figurine from his desk – Miss Tyrannosaurus is   lonely!!;
  * Chris wants the staff to stop feeding the herbivores meat for kicks as it is not beneficial to their digestive health;
  * Sean has forwarded scans of his interview in Popular Science to the entire mailing list;
  * An anonymous employee has forwarded a scathing parody of the interview which almost borders on vindictive.



Eduardo has his own suspicions as to who the perpetrator of the latter is, and his money is _not_ on Dustin - despite hearing that the pot resulting from bets on it being him is currently valued in the high hundreds)

 

\- and reorganising his stationery.

Around two in the afternoon at the end of the first fortnight Eduardo knocks over his carefully constructed paperclip and business card skyscraper in a fit of guilty embarrassment, and ventures into the hatching lab.

The doors are still set to open to his touch, something Eduardo is relieved about. He suspects Mark takes some delight in occasionally revoking the access privileges of his less favoured fellow scientists just to see them humiliated in front of their peers. Sean still hasn’t managed to set foot in the chemistry department, despite the siren call that is Christy.

Mark is in an office chair that has been pulled up to the hatching table. His head is pillowed on his arms, almost invisible in the springy straw. The lab is buzzing quietly, a skeleton shift at this hour of the afternoon. Most of the staff shifts are scheduled around the hottest hours of the day that are locally recognised as sleep hours. Trust Mark to spend even those in the middle of his work.

“Hey,” Chris nods to him, bags under his eyes heavy enough to sink a boat. “I’ve got to hit the hay. Are you free?”

Eduardo nods, guilt creeping into his stomach as he watches Chris have to lean against a nearby bench to stay upright. “Are you okay?” he asks uselessly.

“Great.” Chis says, scrubbing his eyes. “Can you just watch the eggs? We need to watch them twenty-four hours a day at this point. If you notice anything – and I mean anything – grab a senior scientist. Or wake Mark.”

Chris looks at Mark and grimaces. “Actually, just wake Mark. He’ll kill me if he misses something, and the interns are too frightened to touch him.”

“You can count on me.” Eduardo promises.

He drags a lab stool over and sets it next to Mark’s.

“Yeah, I think we can, Wardo.” Chris says, giving Eduardo a weak salute on his way out.

It turns out that egg watching is just as boring with live dinosaurs as it is when it concerns merely a couple of chicken eggs in a pot back at Harvard. When he first sits down Eduardo swears he sees a stirring in the straw. He holds his breath for a couple of seconds but eventually has to pass it off as a result of his shaking the table. Mark, on the other hand, is perfectly still. If Eduardo wasn’t familiar with the deep way Mark tends to sleep, he’d be concerned by his silent face-down slumber of the dead.

It’s hard not to want to watch Mark just as carefully as he is the eggs. The pale skin of his neck is just as fragile, and faintly blue-veined, like the eggshells. Just trying to keep his eyes on the nest rather than constantly checking that Mark’s back is still rising in slow breaths is exhausting.

After thirty minutes of observation, Eduardo finds himself imitating Mark’s posture, chin resting on his hands in the nest, chest crushed against the sharp lip of the table. His elbow brushes Mark’s softly.

The table is warm, he notes, shifting on his seat, gazing lazily through the straw, straight into the mass of eggs. Mark has picked a good spot, he thinks approvingly, counting eggs absently. Their egg – that tiny one Mark had insisted he hold – is still nestled in the midst of the others, like a little brother to a whole clutch of big siblings.

He’s just about to drift off himself, cheek pressed into his palms when a warm arm creeps over his back. He jerks guiltily, glancing at the eggs and then at Mark.

“You’re watching the eggs.” Mark says, staring at him with sleep glazed eyes. Eduardo feels Mark’s fingers curl against his back, stroking hot through his shirt.

Eduardo swallows and nods. His mouth is dry, like Mark’s touch has superheated his body to the point where all moisture has evaporated. Eduardo swallows again, unable to open his mouth, unwilling to jolt Mark out of this gentle, half-asleep reverie.

Mark studies him a little longer, eyelids slipping shut occasionally. He rolls slightly to the right, presses his mouth and cheek against Eduardo’s cheek, more of a nuzzle than anything else. He falls asleep again almost immediately.

Natalie comes in an hour or two later to take over Eduardo’s post. She shakes his shoulder softly, though he doesn’t need the rousing. They let Mark lie, and Eduardo can see that she understands like he does that here is where Mark wants to be. He heads back to his quarters, passing out almost as soon as he crawls between the thin sheets.

Eduardo is woken by a terrifying ringtone. He sits bolt upright and it takes him a couple of seconds to realise exactly why that is, and a good ten seconds more to wake up enough for the co-ordinated movement required to reach for his cell.

“I’m going to kill you for making the satellite phone from Jurassic Park my ringtone.” He accuses, assuming correctly that only Dustin or a terrible emergency could make anyone in this place wake him up at two in the morning.

“Save your murderous talk,” Dustin says. Eduardo can hear the grin in his voice. “You better haul ass down to the hatchery, Mark’s super special magic egg is hatching and he is threatening to have it put into suspended animation if you don’t turn up soon.”

Eduardo tucks the phone into his neck and rolls out of bed with a groan.

“Fine. Let me get my pants on.”

“Please don’t talk to me about your lack of clothes over the phone, Wardo. I’m pretty sure Mark has the lines bugged, and I like my balls attached, thank you.”

Eduardo rolls his eyes and hangs up, tossing the phone into his sheets. He fishes an old t-shirt out of his drawer. He’s not sure exactly how messy hatching is supposed to be. His memories of birthing scenes in Jurassic Park mostly revive memories of wrinkly foetuses in green fish tanks and raptors sneaking around – he really hopes Mark hasn’t got him hatching raptors. Probably not. They’re pretty much exclusively Mark and Dustin’s area, just like he assumes the T-rex’s will be (Sean’s objections be damned).

The labs are on the other side of the compound to the sleeping quarters, something everyone had agreed was sensible in the planning stages, but kind of regret now that they have to walk through a kilometre of halls to get to their workstations every day.

Anyone who is anyone seems to have assembled in the hatchery – or at least it seems that way. Realistically, the crowd is probably almost solely night shift science staff, plus Mark, Dustin and Chris. Sean is hovering around, setting up a long line of tanks on his work bench that Eduardo marks as becoming potentially worrisome in the near future.

The egg doesn’t look much different to when he left it with Natalie and Mark. At least until he gets close enough to the table for Mark and Chris to part for his access.

“Finally,” says Mark, seizing Eduardo’s wrist and pressing his fingers gently against the shell of the baby blue egg.

Eduardo looks up at Mark with a start. The egg is vibrating rapidly. He can feel the tapping on the inside. Tiny little teeth and claws. It’s kind of amazing. Mark is grinning at him.

Together the four of them clear space in the downy nest so that the hatchling has as little to fight against as possible.

“This is a pretty crucial time for a hatchling,” Dustin tells Eduardo, unusually serious in tone. He redistributes straw and down around the other incubating eggs. “If it gets too tired to escape the egg, it will starve or freeze. So let it do its thing, but don’t be afraid to help it out.”

Eduardo nods.

Mark leans in. “You’ve got to touch it first, Wardo.”

The first cracks are already spreading across the surface of the egg.

“When it’s free, you just have to take it in your hand.” Chris adds helpfully. “Just pick it up, like you would any other small animal.”

A tiny snout pokes out from under a section of shell, pinhole nostrils flaring delicately at the end.

Eduardo can’t help but smile at the dinosaur, shell comically balanced on its head like a smooth hat. He reaches out and plucks it away automatically. Soon enough the baby lizard is tussling with the constricting sides of the egg, and then rolling clumsily out of its damp prison.

Eduardo watches it trip over one of his own claws and his heart melts, as much as one can melt at the sight of miniature carnivorous predators. He scoops the baby up before Dustin or Chris can even prompt him. The room erupts in smitten admiration. Even Sean is cooing.

The baby squawks pitchily and clutches weakly at Eduardo’s palms, damp muzzle snuffling at the gaps between his fingers. It only seems to calm when Eduardo wraps his fingers around it loosely, shutting out the bright overhead lighting and the noise of the congratulatory party around them.

Dustin touches him on the arm, “Nice work. Now let us check it over, ‘kay?”

Eduardo looks up from his clasped hands, unable to control the goofy grin that has seized control of his face. “Sure, uhm.”

He unfolds his hands slowly and lets Dustin take the hatching, wincing at the distressed chirps it makes as Dustin deftly flips it over.

“Well,” Dustin says, “congratulations on your son, Wardo. Mark.” He shoots Mark a sneaky eyebrow lift and wink combo.

Chris hands over an eyedropper of fluid that Dustin squeezes down its throat.

“Right, he should be okay for an while now,” Chris says, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Now, if you don’t mind, Mark, check your experiment over so some of us can get some rest.”

Dustin snorts as he hands the dinosaur over. “I think you mean partaaaay.”

“Yeah, no.” Chris says. “He’s all yours, Wardo. Hey.”

Chris reaches over and touches him on the back of his hand, more to reassure himself than Eduardo really, he thinks dryly.

Eduardo is busy watching Mark turning the hatchling in his hands, gently flexing his delicate hind legs and counting his claws. He pinches his snout so to make him open his mouth, and runs a fingertip around the tiny pinhead teeth. Eduardo can’t decide whether he is more charmed by Mark’s satisfied half smile as the hatchling whips his tail solidly against his palm - or by the way he rubs its belly softly to distract him whilst checking that his ears and eyes are clear.

Mark catches him looking, and makes a show of finishing off his assessment of the hatchling with a cold clinical touch. He double checks Dustin’s gender declaration, because, well, Dustin. He has a strange sense of humour.

Mark has no choice but to fulfil his original intentions for the hatchling. He doesn’t want a repeat of their first hatching, but that’s impossible. Eduardo is here now, and the code is technically perfect.

It had been perfect the whole time, just badly timed, he decides with finality.

“He’ll die without you.” Mark says finally, cradling the baby in his palm. He flicks his eyes up at Eduardo, and holds his gaze. “Right now, he’s dying a little for want of your touch.” This is the closest Mark is going to get to begging.

The tiny Procompsognathus coos mournfully, and contorts painfully in Mark’s hand. Eduardo’s face twists like he’s about to cry. He rubs his forearm over his face swiftly and holds out his hands.

“Give him to me.”

Mark steps into Eduardo’s personal space, pressing their hands together and cupping them so the baby can stumble weakly back into Eduardo’s warm palms.

“Just keep him warm,” Mark tells him softly, “we’ll help you feed him. He loves you, Wardo.”

Eduardo looks up from the nestling compy. “What?”

Mark has his eyes fixed on Eduardo’s gentle hands. “He knows you. I made him for you. He loves you more than anyone or anything he will ever know, and I can guarantee that affection will never waver.”

Chris swallows hard and glances at Dustin.

Eduardo opens his mouth, but he just wets his lips and stares at Mark.

“Will you take care of him, Wardo?” Mark is speaking quietly, and so quickly he is almost tripping over his words.

“See the way he’s gone to sleep? They all need you, Wardo, but this one most of all. We all need you, Wardo-” Mark flushes almost imperceptibly. “Also, I’m not sorry.”

“You are such a fucking dick.” Eduardo tells him honestly, after a pause that has everyone in the room holding their breath. “I kind of don’t want to see your face for a couple of days.”

Mark shrugs, and his lips quirk up for a second, “Okay,” before he pads out of the laboratory, flip flops slapping all the way.

“Oh my god.” Dustin says. “Mark just totally gave Eduardo a baby.”

“Technically” Chris says faintly, “he already gave Wardo all the babies. Ever. In the entire park.”

“Yeah, but this is different.”

“Totally.” Sean interrupts. “Also, you guys are blocking the coffee, so if you could kindly gawk at the sibling you are going to have to compete with for the next twenty years from five steps to the left, that would be really great.”

 

\---

 

Most of the staff clear out a couple of minutes after Mark departs, shifts over or more urgent chores calling. Eduardo realises as the room empties that Mark has pulled out all the stops for a single hatching. Only last week a trio of stegosaurus had hatched and barely a third as many staff had been on emergency detail.

Eduardo sits in the lab until it empties; vaguely hoping that someone will take this responsibility out of his hands.

Sean is the only scientist left in the end, a fact that surprises Eduardo. Sean is still setting up his tyrannosaurus tanks, tight-lipped and utterly focused. This deep in his work he actually looks an awful lot like Mark.

Sean staggers past Eduardo’s stool with a sheet of Perspex in his arms, Prada shirt rolled up to his elbows.

He gives Eduardo a nod in passing. Eduardo is embarrassed to note that there is no malice in his face, no cruel smirk. There’s just the strain of a guy doing his best work for Mark, just like everyone else here.

Eduardo respects that.

The little guy in his palm kicks gently, reminding him that he has no idea how to care for a baby, let alone a baby lizard.

He drops by his quarters for a moment before he heads to Dustin’s.

Chris opens the door at his knock, raising his eyebrows when he sees the bundle Eduardo is clutching. He has a fan of cards in the hand that isn’t pressed to the door panel. He is also clearly buzzed, judging from the exaggerated care he takes in stepping aside for Eduardo to pass.

Dustin is predictably sprawled out on the couch in front of GTA VI.

“Dustin Moscowitz is about to break Liberty City’s all time pedestrian wipe out record,” he informs them, making a violent swerve across six lanes in pursuit of a lone NPC.

“Dustin Moscowitz is so drunk he has gotten shot to death by the cops four times in the last ten minutes,” Chris reminds him smarmily.

Dustin sits up with a start when Eduardo sits down beside him, dropping the Playstation controller onto his chest.

“Here-” Chris starts. He goes to hand Eduardo a beer, only to have Dustin thwart him mid pass, suddenly agile for a guy on the verge of coma-ing out only minutes prior.

“Wardo’s a mommy now, Uncle Chris. We can’t lose him to the bottle! He has a family to think of!”

Eduardo just about brains him with the beer himself. “Shut. Up.”

He checks on his charge. “Shi-” he stops mid-word, “—shipping and exports...” he finishes awkwardly, glancing at Chris guiltily. “He’s waking up.”

“Oh wooow,” Dustin coos, hooking his chin over Eduardo’s chin for a better vantage point. “Uncle Chris, get the baby food.”

“Stop calling me that, you asshole.” Chris says, good natured, heading to Dustin’s mini fridge.  
He comes back with a sealed jar. “Worms and stuff,” he tells Eduardo, “We end up looking after the runty ones after hours a lot. Not that I’m ruling out the possibility that Dustin has developed a taste for chilled insects.”

“Yum yum, I love grubs.” Dustin sings, reaching over Eduardo’s shoulder to rub the baby’s snout gently.  
“He’s so pretty,” Dustin says, “just like his mom.” Eduardo is pretty sure Dustin is so drunk that he’s drooling on his shirt a little.

Chris pops open the jar. Eduardo wrinkles his nose at the smell.

"Yeah, I know." Chris grimaces, dipping his fingers in and fishing around. He pulls out a couple of worms and soft curled grubs. All of them are glistening with preservative. Chris drops them onto the coaster closest to Eduardo with a splat.

The baby starts to wriggle in its wool wrapping. Eduardo slips his left hand into the blankets absently, reaching for a grub with the other. The little lizard calms immediately with his touch, and when they pull back the wool, it is flicking its tongue against Eduardo’s fingertips peacefully, tiny claws and tail hooked around his knuckles.

Chris gives Eduardo a measuring look. “You’re a natural,” he remarks, not sounding surprised at all. He scoops up a handful of grubs and heads back to the kitchenette.

Dustin slides over the top of the sofa and leans into Eduardo’s side. “So, what are you gonna name him?”

Chris finishes pressing setting buttons on the microwave and hurries back, perches on the top of the sofa above Dustin.

Eduardo picks up the least slimy worm on the coffee table and offers the compy the plump end. He takes a bite before turning his snout up at the chilled bug. “Sorry,” Eduardo apologises, putting it down and rubbing the baby’s belly the way Mark had when he’d placated him earlier.

“Can they get indigestion?” Eduardo worries aloud, turning to Chris, who, despite not being an experienced animal and reptile handler, is definitely the least drunk of his current advisory choices.

“He’s fine, Wardo.” Chris says. “He’s probably just a fussy hatchling. Mark’s ones usually are.”

Eduardo twists around and frowns at Chris’s back as he walks over to get the warmed grubs. “What exactly is the difference between – this one – and the other compy in the park? What do you mean ‘Mark’s ones’? Aren’t they all his?”

Chris comes back slowly, and sets the mug of insects down in front of Eduardo.

“This one, your one – he’s just programmed with Mark’s original source code. That’s all.” Chris shrugs and sits down, pushing the mug closer to Eduardo. “Here, they’re lukewarm now.”

Eduardo fishes a grub out of the mass, grimacing absently at the texture. The compy takes it in his jaws delicately and flops onto his back in Eduardo’s lap, chewing experimentally at first, and then wolfing it down as fast as he can tear it apart.

Dustin rubs his cheek against Eduardo’s shoulder, having reached the sleepy-affectionate stage of his drunkenness, and waits for him to finish feeding the compy before he reaches into Eduardo’s lap to tap the tip of the baby’s tail.

“He’s so happy,” he says to Chris, deliriously, “no crying like the others. And he eats!”

Eduardo frowns at Chris, fixing him with his patented we-are-going-to-talk-about-this-at-a-time-convenient-to-me-that-does-not-involve-Mark-or-Dustin glare, and pinches another plump grub.

“I’m going to call him Diego.” he says instead.

Dustin giggles. “You can be Baby Jaguar and Mark is obviously Alicia.”

Chris smiles. “Freeze, Bobos!” He chants, grinning at Dustin.

“I can’t believe you losers watch Nick Jr.” Eduardo says, but he’s laughing. Diego is trying to snuggle against his bare stomach under the hem of his t-shirt and it tickles like crazy.

Chris offers to take Diego back to the lab for a couple of hours and tuck him into the incubator with the last rags of Eduardo’s shirt. However, as soon as Diego leaves Eduardo’s lap he starts crying so plaintively that Eduardo practically snatches him back.

“Whoa, okay.” Chris says, holding his hands up where Eduardo can see them.

“Sorry, I just...” he shrugs, embarrassed, tucking Diego into the crook of his neck with one hand, and lets the compy nuzzle him until he starts crooning again. “I need to look after him.”

Chris nods and let him leave with Diego pressed close with one hand and a mug full of grubs for later in the other, wool sweater thrown over his shoulder like a dishrag.

His quarters seem too cold for a dinosaur with the air con on, so he disables all of Dustin’s hard work and switches it off, instead deciding to risk cracking the window for circulation. Then he lays down on top of the covers and let Diego burrow around inside his t-shirt until dawn finally breaks.

 

\---

  
He doesn’t manage to get a wink of sleep during their lie-down, thanks to being so utterly paranoid that he might roll over and crush Diego in his sleep, or miss him waking up for feeding and accidentally starve him.

He has reached that point of exhaustion where sitting in the middle of the cafeteria at the crack of dawn seems completely normal. He’s wondering whether he should take some scones and try to catch Myrtle so she can teach him how to mother right.

He looks up when he hears footfalls on the tiled floor, but when he sees it is only Mark, his face twists up, part desperate and part mad.

“Is he hungry?” Eduardo says in greeting, forehead so creased with concern that Mark wavers as he reaches out his hand, fingers almost going to Eduardo’s face.

Mark pulls back the folds of the bundle instead and peers down at the compy in Eduardo’s hands. It is wrapped in soft wool – Eduardo has sacrificed his white merino sweater, the purchase of which Mark distinctly remembers coinciding with Dustin just about losing all lab-visiting privileges last winter for splashing Eduardo with a couple of drops of coffee.

“He’s asleep.” Mark tells Eduardo, smoothing the wool down again. “You know, generally mothers try to synch their sleeping cycles with their young. You’ll be stuck feeding him constantly in an hour or two.”

Eduardo’s shoulders drop, and he gathers the reptile closer, as if Mark might take it away because of his shoddy parenting.

Mark takes a seat next to Eduardo on the bench, casually sitting too close, as he always does. Eduardo’s thigh is warm through his jeans. He’s wearing the same shirt he wore to the hatching. Mark breathes in the scent of his sweat. It is with a gratifying thrill that he realizes he can pick up the dry scaly scent of reptiles on him as well.

“Why did you do this?” Eduardo asks quietly, after a minute or two.

Mark scratches the back of his head, silent.

“This isn’t my – How am I supposed to do _my job_ , Mark? Someone has to deal with the money and I’m not – you of all people know I’m not _qualified_ ,” Eduardo lets go of his charge with one hand to make half of a sarcastic quotation mark, “to handle the ani – the dinosaurs.”

“This isn’t a zoo.” Mark reminds him.

“A zoo would be cheaper.” Eduardo grumbles.

Mark rolls his eyes. “You have interns, Wardo.”

Eduardo frowns.

“You have interns and clerks and chartered accountants and business and finance majors. We hired them for this. I never asked you to be my accountant.”

Eduardo lets go of a breath slowly, hissing like the old stovetop kettle they used to keep on the hotplate in Kirkland, simmering himself into a rage, cheeks flushing with frustration the longer Mark goes on.

“You’re not here to count the pennies, Wardo.”

“We haven’t even begun to turn a profit, Mark. We’re going to run at a loss for _years_. Because you won’t let us monetise-” Eduardo whispers at Mark balefully.

Mark bites back his oft rehearsed explanation of why they have to do this his way, the right way, not necessarily the profitable way – but the way that will have them boasting the best, biggest, and most brilliant creatures in the long run. They’re going to be the brightest beacon in genetic science, if they aren’t already.

Not some shoddy profiteering Winklevoss outfit.

Wardo has heard this spiel enough, even if he apparently never listens to it properly. Mark decides to cut to the chase.

“I asked you to be my partner in this because I wanted you with me. I thought you’d be a good mom.”

Eduardo snaps his mouth shut with an audible click.

“To the dinosaurs.” Mark finishes.

Eduardo is clenching his jaw hard, Mark can tell from the twitching muscle on the side of his face. He tries to press closer, communicate exactly how much he wants Eduardo with him. He is fairly certain that Eduardo won’t dare lose it whilst holding their baby. What they’ve made together means that much to him. Which was why he’d known Eduardo would come. He can’t do it without Eduardo, and Eduardo can’t run away from this, especially now.

“I can’t do this without you.” He says, trying to pin Eduardo in place with his words, trying to push the meaning into his head. Eduardo had always _got him_ before. He’d understood.

“Excuse me.” Eduardo says evenly, tucking the sleeping compy into the crook of his arm, pushing himself off the bench. “I have to go play mom,” he reminds Mark scathingly.

Mark heads to the kitchens, figuring a couple of days of coding will give Eduardo enough of a head start to cool down again.

 

\---

 

Dustin is the only upper level staff member in the labs this morning, and he is holding a Perspex wall aloft as Sean does some sort of fiddly glue-gun business on the underside. He is swaying slightly and looking appropriately green when Eduardo considers how many beers had littered his coffee table mere hours ago.

When the door slides open, Dustin drops the pane (Sean swears distractedly and trails hot glue all over the floor) and rushes him, cooing.

“Chris has a hangover so I have to help Sean put together his terrarium instead, and apparently I don’t know a right angle from my own elbow, so _pleaseee_ let me look after Diego today, _please_ , Wardo.”

“For the love of god, get him out of my lab.” Sean yells from under another sheet of Perspex.

Seeing as Dustin has already kidnapped the lump of woolly dinosaur without a peep from the bundle, Eduardo shrugs.

“Okay, but I’m going to talk to Chris, and don’t you dare leave that dinosaur on the floor somewhere after he’s scored you a date.”

Dustin claps his free hand to his heart, affronted.

“Don’t bullshit me,” Eduardo says sternly, “Also, babies are the lowest form of pick up line, and you should be ashamed.”

“Dinosaurs,” Dustin says righteously, “are the best pick up line in the universe, you can’t deny that, seeing as Mark used it on you and now you’re raising his kids.”

Eduardo crosses his arms and glares.

“Not taking it back.” Dustin says, rocking Diego gently. “Nope. I just can’t keep the truth inside, Wardo.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Eduardo says.

Dustin bites his lip a little, bouncing the dinosaur in his arms. “Okay, Wardo.”

 

\---

 

Sweet, precious water is Chris’ best friend right now, and he is determined to drink until his tap runs dry, or his cells bloat and explode. Whichever comes first. Opening his door is way down the list of priorities, after the temptation of turning on the shower and curling up under the spray, and making history as the island’s first drug overdose (he thinks, meanly, that maybe he should try to achieve that before Parker inevitably claims the title).

Sadly, he has forgotten that Mark is disgustingly in love with Eduardo and has secretly given him palm-print override access to almost every door panel in the complex.

“Are you okay?”

Chris is torn between slamming his bathroom door in Eduardo’s face, and giving into that warm lilt of concern in his voice that pretty much demands that he give in to warm Wardo-hugs.

Okay, so Mark is clearly more perceptive than Chris has given him credit for. That tinge of a Portuguese accent that Eduardo slips into when he’s angry or worried is one hundred percent soaked with maternal pheromones.

“I’m fine, Wardo.” Chris gives in, wiping his chin and shutting off the tap reluctantly. “Just...really, really hung-over.”

Eduardo hovers for a moment and then grabs at Chris gently, slinging his arm over his shoulder and walking him into the bedroom, which is...not a great idea given that he knows Mark seems to have some way of keeping tabs on Eduardo’s whereabouts that go beyond even creepy stalker levels.

He is grateful when his forehead hits the clean cool sheets though, and though it’s super weird when Eduardo pulls off his shoes and pulls the sheet over him, it’s also nice. He wonders if this is what it was like to be Mark back at Harvard. Eduardo says something about getting him a glass of water and Chris has to turn over to make sure he doesn’t take his immersion in the Mark experience to the inevitable point of borderline sexual harassment.

Eduardo is back quickly with not only water but aspirin and a pot of steaming two minute noodles, and a glass of ice cubes from the freezer. Chris lets Eduardo prop him up with some pillows, thinking that if Mark doesn’t propose soon, he wouldn’t mind a shot at it.

Even after he swallows the aspirin and pulls the sheet back over his face, Eduardo doesn’t leave. He fusses with the blankets and then the A/C remote, and even refolds some of Chris’s clothes. Chris listens to him shuffling around restlessly for a quarter of an hour before he throws the sheet off and fixes Eduardo with a squint.

“Spit it out.”

Eduardo bites his lip, “Do you need a Powerade?” he asks lamely.

“ _No._ I know how to feed myself, unlike the rest of our band of domesticated idiots. As such, I have enough brain power to surmise that you have something to ask me. Though why you thought you needed to prevent Diego from hearing it, I do not understand. You do realise that he is a dinosaur, right? He’s never going to speak English.” Chris flops back exhaustedly and waves at the end of his bed.

Eduardo sits obediently, folding his arms nervously. “You said that Diego was special because he is programmed with Mark’s source code, right?”

“Yes.”

“Dustin said there were others, and...it didn’t sound like they were well. I thought we were hatching mostly bigger herbivores right now. There aren’t any compy in artificial production right now.” Eduardo continues hesitantly.

“You’re right again,” Chris sighs.

“Myrtle?”

“No.” Chris shakes his head. “She’s second generation code.”

“I wasn’t aware that there was a first and second generation to differentiate between.” Eduardo says, narrowing his eyes. “I’m fairly sure something as major as a programming rewrite would have come up in the numbers. And if there were problems with the first generation, are there problems now? Should I be adjusting for extra veterinary costs?”

Chris can practically see the numbers adding up behind Eduardo’s furrowed brow. At least he doesn’t look mad, just resigned.

“No, you don’t have to worry about that.” Chris assures him. “There are no first generation dinosaurs on the island. Except Diego, of course.”

Eduardo stares at Chris. “Are you running a temperature? You aren’t making any sense. I’m just saying - If there was something wrong with the code, then why did he use it on Diego?”

Chris closes his eyes for a second and promises himself that he will figure out a cruel and unusual punishment for Mark later.

“Wardo,” he says gently. “There were first gen dinosaurs. They all died.”

“What? You never-” Eduardo leaps off of the foot of the bed and paces to the window and back. “What the hell is Mark doing, Chris?”

“This is awkward.” Chris mumbles into his hands, rubbing at his own temples, “Okay, shut up. Stand still, _please_ , you’re making me nauseous. Long story short: Mark is obsessed with you-”

“What-”

“Shut up. You know perfectly well that he wants you. You’re just playing coy, or you’re stuck in denial, or something equally stupid, whatever.” Chris says firmly. “He is unfortunately just as pathetic as you, so _naturally_ he dealt with his feelings by coding dinosaurs who are equally as obsessed with you, because god forbid he actually fucking tells you how he feels.”

Eduardo’s mouth is hanging open at this point, but Chris carries on, determined not to let Eduardo interrupt until he is good and ready. His headache actually feels better the longer he shouts, which is a welcome surprise. He needs to shout at people more often.

“We had to bury them all, Wardo. Mark’s dinosaurs. He wrote them to be so in love with you that they died from wanting you before they had a chance to even see you, and then we had to bury them. Dustin had nightmares, not even about the dinosaurs, but about Mark – because if that’s how Mark feels standing next to you, what will he do when you leave?”

Chris has to stop for a moment to swallow convulsively, his voice tinny with emotion.

“I’m sorry that Mark did this to you. It wasn’t fair to force this kind of responsibility on you. I’d tell you leave, but the thing is that I know you, Eduardo. You’ve always wanted Mark. He’s done this really badly, Wardo, but if you would just commit.”

Chris sucks in a deep breath before he can finish. “Please, could you just kiss him already? He’s been waiting years for you.”

“Um.” Eduardo says, looking slightly frightened.

“Sorry, Wardo.” Chris apologises, reaching for the noodles Eduardo left on the table next to him. He scarfs them in thirty seconds flat, surprised by how much yelling at one of your best friends can scare up an appetite.

“No,” Eduardo says, equally apologetic. “I think that...you’re probably right. Even though this is seriously none of your business, and you definitely should have told me about the rewrite because I’m pretty sure that this means you guys have fiddled the books somehow and I am now _really_ not looking forward to filing our taxes next year.”

“Mark hired an accountant.”

“That’s not an excuse.” Eduardo says, exasperated. “Mark keeps saying that too, as if it’s going to change the fact that I work here and have a serious vested interest in precisely where my money is going.”

“He wants you with him, you idiot.” Chris says, disbelieving. “Please do not tell me you’ve been thinking that he hired all these accounting and econ graduates because he thinks you’re not capable of handling the finances.”

Eduardo’s lips twist a little.

“You have got to be kidding.”

“He told me he brought me because he thought I’d be a good mom, Chris.”

“Okay, wow, perfect example of misogynist Mark rearing his head. Sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I’d say that the truth is probably something more like ‘I brought you here because I want to marry you and raise dinosaurs with you in egalitarian bliss’. I promise he’s not actually planning to enslave you as a nanny because he thinks that’s all you’re good for, okay?”

“Strangely, you aren’t making me feel any better.”

Chris smirks a little, swallowing the salty broth in the bottom of the noodle bowl with the relish of someone with a true hangover. “That’s because I’m not Mark.”

Eduardo stuffs his hands in his pockets, silent for a minute. “...Will you be okay if I leave now?”

“Only if you’re going to Mark’s quarters.”

“Don’t. I left Diego with Dustin.”

Chris raises his eyebrows in mock horror. “Then by all means, go.”

 

\---

  
It takes Eduardo a couple of days to think about Chris's telling off before he gives in to the inevitable and tracks Mark down.

Mark is cross-legged on his bed, laptop settled in his lap. He looks up for a moment when Eduardo slides the door shut again, and then flicks back down to his screen without a pause in his typing.

"You don't have to carry him around all the time," Mark says, hitting the enter key a couple of times to separate something he wants to rework later from the rest of the code. "It's actually developmentally detrimental to keep him from walking at this crucial stage."

Eduardo looks at Diego, trying to discern whether he is wearing what Dustin has dubbed his "sad baby" face. Apparently he puts it on when he gets hungry or cold, or missing Eduardo. Eduardo isn't sure about the whole reptiles having expressions thing, but Dustin is the bio and animal expert. Then again, it's Dustin. He can kind of see it, though. The blinking and crooning is more than Eduardo can ignore.

Diego doesn't seem to be doing much beyond trying to scratch his snout with one of his fragile clawed arms. Eduardo rubs it for him, smiling as Diego presses his head hard into his hand and rolls in his warm nest.

"Alright," Eduardo says decisively. He turns away from Mark and crouches down. The floor seems clear enough of cables and hazards.

 

(He vividly remembers his mother insisting they survey their house every time her sisters were allowed to stay with them in Miami. Pai would leave for his rounds of meetings, and for a week every year the house would fill with laughter and screeching and babies and small crawling children that his Mae spent the entirety of the stay jealously coddling. Eduardo remembers being coerced into posing for photographs. He remembers that he'd always been trusted to hold the littlest of his cousins. Mae had told him he was a natural, smiling wide at her sister, winking hopefully.

Pai had wanted a son, not children. One son. And he'd gotten Eduardo.

She'd wanted netos, grandchildren. He knew that now, felt guilty about it sometimes. The cousins were all grown up now, and probably barely remembered him or his mother beyond their names in birthday cards once a year. Brazil was too far to keep up appearances.)

 

Eduardo lays the sweater out, waits for Diego to orient himself to his new surroundings. Realistically, he knows that Diego can walk around perfectly competently. He could probably hunt his own prey given half the chance and a predator-free enclosure. Diego is confident enough. He springs over the sleeve of the sweater, landing with a flourish. He seems a little disappointed that there is nothing there, and darts under Mark's bed in search of adventure.

Eduardo can't help but laugh, lying flat on the floor to peer after him. He lies still, watching Diego charging through dust bunnies and tackling lint. He encounters one of Mark's socks and lays into it ruthlessly, biting and shaking it around. Eduardo's still laughing quietly when Mark blocks his view by way of setting his bare feet on the floor.

Diego lets out a plaintive baby sized roar and flies out from under the bed, darting between Mark's feet and hurling himself against Eduardo's chest. He spins around and hisses viciously at Mark's toes.

"You scared him," Eduardo accuses him, trying not to burst into laughter.

"Huh." Mark says, wriggling his toes experimentally.

Diego snaps at them.

"At least we know my programming is sound."

"About that..." Eduardo says quietly, petting Diego into calmness.

Mark reaches behind him and pushes the lid of his laptop down.

"I heard about the first ones."

Mark shrugs, face expressionless.  
Eduardo rolls onto his back, sighing. Diego seems to take that as a sign that Mark's toes are no threat. He creeps around them again, seemingly intent on finishing off the sock.

"Come here." Eduardo pats the floor until Mark relents and sits beside him, knees clicking as he stretches them out.

Eduardo looks up at him for a while. "I called him Diego."

Mark nods once.

"Do you like it?"

Mark studies him blankly. "Does it matter whether I do?"

Eduardo closes his eyes, screwing up his face. He has to turn away for a moment. "Don't be like that, Mark."

He feels Mark's fingers on his brow, tentative, trying to smooth out the frown. "Just-- Stop being such an asshole."

The fingers leave. "...How?"

"Just say that you're sorry."

"I'm sorry."

"Do you even know why you should be sorry?"

Mark hesitates. "For forcing you to stay like this. Keeping things from you. For--"

Eduardo turns back to watch him say it.

"I'm sorry I never had the guts to ask you what you wanted." It's almost a mumble, but Eduardo hears him crystal clear.

"Okay," Eduardo says, staring up at Mark.

"Okay?"

"Ask me, asshole." Eduardo laughs, slightly hysterical.

"Okay, uh." Mark watches him laugh, bewildered. "What do you want, Wardo?"

Eduardo can feel that thrum of right. He has power in this moment to take - but also he hopes wildly, to give. He knows he can give Mark so much. He thinks of the ways Mark has been pushing and pushing, trying to manipulate him into roles and situations. He thinks of Diego, and the damn canjica, and Gabriella. And the code all suddenly seems clear to him, even though he's never seen it, could never read it, doesn't need to when he knows that Mark wrote it and wrote _them into it_. If Mark had just asked him, he would have said yes. He would have said yes to everything and Mark.

"Kiss me, right now." Eduardo demands, so certain that it translates as desperation.

To his credit, Mark doesn't hesitate. He's clumsy, and he bites Eduardo's lips in his eagerness. Eduardo yelps, but pulls at him and drags him down nonetheless. Mark throws a leg over Eduardo's waist, grasps at his shoulders. He's panting almost immediately into Eduardo's mouth, sucking at his lips, groaning at the pressure between them. It's as if Mark has lost all self-control. Eduardo can barely catch his breath, and when he does he finds himself unable to breathe again almost immediately.

Mark is kissing his jaw, burying his face in Eduardo's neck, breathing him in heavily as if he hasn't seen him in years. Eduardo closes his eyes and just soaks it in. The weight of Mark gently rocking against him is perfect, it's warm, it's like something Eduardo has been missing for years without even knowing.

He curls one arm around Mark's waist, and places the other hand on the back of Mark's head, softly urging him on. After a few moments, Mark seems to come back to himself. He pulls back slowly, face flushed. He cups Eduardo's face, groans.

"Diego is chirping," he says, hoarse. He shifts gingerly, climbing off Eduardo's lap with difficulty and peering under the bed.

Eduardo sits up hurriedly, "Shit," he says, "shit, Mark, find him."

They find Diego easily. He's managed to get his claws caught in the torn threads of the sock, and he's rolling on his back, kicking and squeaking unhappily. Mark unravels him deftly, and hands him over to Eduardo, who only has to pet him for a moment before he's writhing to get away and play again.

"They grow up so fast," Eduardo says, slightly put out at his casual dismissal.

"I could scare him again," Mark offers sarcastically.

Eduardo punches him in the shoulder. "Asshole," he says again, fondly.

 

\---

  
“So who else on this rock is hitched?” Sean asks, dropping his breakfast tray down opposite Chris.

He nods across the room to where Mark is cradling a flash of green that can’t be anything but Diego in one arm and precariously balancing a tray of food that he is clearly not going to eat in the other. Mark puts both Diego and the tray down on a table that Eduardo is using as a makeshift pillow and sits opposite him.

Eduardo sits up and they all look at their own plates busily.

“I’m an ordained minister,” Dustin says helpfully.

Dustin, as a mere zoologist, is apparently persona non grata, and doesn’t even get a good morning nod despite having copped the majority of the splash from Sean’s generous portion of scrambled eggs.

“Seriously, I printed out the certificate.”

“You’re Jewish,” Chris says, exasperated.

“I am a tolerant man!” Dustin declares.

Sean looks at Chris pityingly. “I hope you aren’t locked into this relationship.”

“Excuse _me_!” Chris says, blushing to the roots of his hair despite his vehement head shaking. “Some of us are here to actually work, not hook up.”

“Oh, Chris,” Dustin says mournfully. “You besmirch our love. And Wardo is definitely not hooking up, look at him. Marky is practically going to have to spoonfeed him his breakfast. In a totally non-sexy way.”

Sean hums sympathetically, “He really shouldn’t have knocked up Saverin so soon.”

Chris gets up and takes his tray to the chemists’ table.

“Nooo, come back...” Dustin trails off, realising he is having breakfast alone with Sean Parker. “This is weird.”

“Yeah.”

Dustin stirs his fruit salad for a second, “Yeah. Bye.” He gets up and heads for Mark and Wardo’s table. At least Eduardo will let him play with his food as long as he shares with Diego.

On Tuesday morning, Dustin regrets not making better peace with Sean when he runs afoul of a triceratops on his daily rounds. The island has a serious deficit of people he can call for a rescue when he does something so truly catastrophically embarrassing that even Eduardo would laugh at him before bailing him out. Sean can at least empathise with him on some level when it comes to having a history of bad PR.

Chris just about has a heart attack when the medical centre calls him up to inform him that their head zoologist has sustained a nasty gash and a minor sprain. When he turns up at Dustin’s bedside he is a little less concerned and a lot more pissed off to hear that the triceratops hadn’t even done anything wrong, let alone meant to injure Dustin. Chris wouldn’t have minded if that had been the case because he would have been spared the reality, which is that apparently Dustin had been _riding on the dinosaur_ and had sustained his injuries falling off.

“Do you think you’re Indiana Jones or something?” Chris asks him, exasperated, as their head medic wraps a neon green bandage around Dustin’s ankle and shin. “Did they encourage this kind of behaviour in the biology department at Harvard? In what world would it be a good idea to ride on a triceratops? You could have  
been _trampled_.”

Dustin shrugs, “It would have been cool if it had worked. And technically, Sheldon didn’t object. I just fell off. I’ll ride him right up to the foyer next time and you’ll see how cool and heroic I look and you’ll be super jealous.”

“I absolutely forbid you to ride on anything in this park.” Chris declares, point blank.

Dustin raises an eyebrow suggestively.

“Anything.” Chris says again firmly.

Of course this has to be the day that Sean sweeps in from the surveillance room and throws a tantrum about his tyrannosaurus colony being _emotionally distressed_.

“They aren’t even fighting each other for dominance,” he moans, showing Mark footage on his tablet, “they’re sticking together, hunting as a pack, and huddling together at night. Look how nervy Britney is acting.” He points at the biggest tyrannosaurus of the four strong pack.

Eduardo isn’t sure that tearing the flesh in strips from one of the carefully deposited goat carcasses counts as nervous behaviour, but Mark looks mildly concerned.

Eduardo has pretty much given up on pretending to oversee the bulk of the finances, seeing as Diego gets bored with the office in about 30 seconds flat and starts chewing cables. Mark very awkwardly demands that the two of them spend most of their time in the labs, allegedly so Diego’s progress can be monitored by the biologists.

Eduardo doesn’t need to be convinced. The interns insist on taking turns teaching Diego to catch insect prey, when they aren’t letting him hatch the first pterosaur babies. His relocation also allows Eduardo to catch up on sleep on the two seater sofa in what turns out to be Mark’s notoriously un-secret coding office. If Eduardo occasionally stirs to find Mark pulled up to the sofa in his desk chair, fingering the tufts of hair that have escaped his hurried morning gel application, he doesn’t object.

“Pan back 30 degrees,” Mark directs.

Eduardo deposits Diego in Dustin’s lap to cheer him up. He is going through a stage where he constantly tried to chirp shrilly over human conversations, specifically Chris’s, which amuses Dustin to no end.  
Eduardo stands over Mark’s shoulder trying to see what it is he has spotted in the fairly monotonous foliage. Despite its devastating beauty, the flora all tended to blur together for him after a while. If it weren’t for his inexplicably good sense of direction and keen observation of weather patterns, Chris and Mark probably wouldn’t let him out of the compound. Chris barely trusted Dustin to find the gates on his own, and still threatened daily to chip him in his sleep. Actually, after this incident, Eduardo is pretty sure that it’ll become more of a promise than a threat.

“There,” Mark says, prodding the screen hard enough that it autozooms.

“A camera?” Eduardo hazards, squinting at the pixelated image, his stomach twisting up at something familiar about the picture.

“What the fuck,” Sean says, scandalized.

Dustin has to be physically restrained by Chris until Mark passes them the tablet, his face perfectly blank.

Predictably, everyone turns to Sean.

“Whoa, he says, throwing his hands up, “there is no way in hell I would smuggle out data on my own t-rexs without my name all over it in neon. _Popular Science_ would give me millions. Think about it,” he stresses.

“He’s got a point,” Chris points out, resigned to the fact. Diego squeaks merrily over top of him.

Sean drops his hands, letting out a breath in a long whistle, “a guy makes one mistake and bam, guilty for life.”

Chris looks like he’s about to change his mind for a second.

Dustin dumps Diego into his lap, effectively defusing him for a moment.

Eduardo takes the tablet from Dustin, zooms as close as the camera can manage without losing visibility completely. He has to swallow before he announces it: “It’s not Sean. That’s Winklevoss equipment.”  
He clears his throat again, unable to meet Chris’s unspoken ‘so what?’ expression with more than a nervous glance.

“As in...Winklevii-only, DNA-tuned electronics.”

Dustin throws his head back into the infirmary pillows. “This again, whyyyy,” he moans, muffled.

“So, technically, this is still Sean’s fault.” Chris says, gritting his teeth.

Eduardo shrugs. He can’t deny that that’s the truth.

“One of the twins had to plant it and set it up though,” he reminds Chris.

“Can we knock it out with an electromagnetic pulse?” Dustin asks.

“No,” Chris says.

“Not unless you want to lose our equipment too.” Mark adds, sullen.

He’s fixated on the tablet, refusing to meet Eduardo’s eyes. Eduardo bites his lip and tells Chris, “We have to smash it.”

“Right,” Mark says, biting the word out with a finality that Eduardo recognises as resignation. He breathes again.

Mark taps on the screen in Eduardo’s lap, memorising the coordinates of the surveillance plant. He shuts down the tablet and hands it back to Sean.

“You are not going to the predator enclosure on your own.” Chris says slowly. “Not with Dustin down and the possibility of the Winklevoss twins being on the grounds. Twins who, I must remind you, describe themselves in their own words as six foot four, two-twenty, and oh yeah, Mark, there are two of them. And they _hate your guts._ ”

“They aren’t actually murderous,” Eduardo says, uncomfortably.

Mark presses his lips together. “Get me one of the taser-prods. The sooner I go, the less data they harvest.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No.” Mark says over his shoulder sharply, shuffling out and down the corridor.

“Yikes,” Sean says, watching Eduardo storm after him.

“Trouble in paradise. What got up his ass?” He inches away from Chris gingerly. “Apart from the obvious.”

“Potentially,” Dustin theorises slowly, following Chris’s pacing route around the room with his eyes. “Potentially...the Winklevii, right?”

Sean sucks in a gasp that threatens to swallow up Dustin’s head, along with the gurney and sidetable.

“For fuck’s sake, Dustin.” Chris hisses, flailing his hands at the door.

“Both?” Sean asks, wide eyed, practically on his toes with excitement at being party to founder gossip.

“Please say both!?” he begs.

“Shut up,” Chris snarls.

“No, just let me get this straight.” Sean says, grinning manically, “You guys wanted me killed for merely switching sides – totally legally, by the way. Meanwhile, your CFO is banging the competition, and all that happens to him is that he marries your CEO?!”

Chris looks pained.

“Though...I guess you could call that last part a punishment,” Sean muses. “How come you guys never told me Mrs. Zuck was such a boss? OW-”

Sean splutters and shakes himself like a dog. “Too soon?” he says, wiping his face with a sleeve.

“You don’t talk about Wardo like that.” Dustin says, uncharacteristically icy. He sets his glass back down on the table with a click.

“You have no idea what Wardo and Mark are like, seeing as you aren’t one of their _friends_.” Dustin emphasises the word. “It is totally none of your business, but so you don’t go thinking you can sell your bullshit fantasies about Eduardo to yet another magazine, I want you to know the truth. Eduardo is, barring Chris and my mom- He’s the best person I’ve ever known.”

Chris is just calm enough to look flattered

“If he ever made it with a Winklevii, vermin that they are, it sure wasn’t while he was with Mark.” Dustin glances at Chris, suddenly nervous.

Chris nods.

Diego rolls restlessly against the sheet, and Dustin smiles at him, with his familiar crooked grin.

“Even if Mark seems to think they were betrothed in Orientation Week, they weren’t actually together until we got here. We don’t have a problem with Eduardo’s life choices prior to the park. So you _definitely_ don’t get to judge Eduardo.”

Chris raises his eyebrows, fighting the urge to facepalm, “Life choices, huh?”

“Yeah, thanks for that vague explanation.” Sean says wryly, wringing out his pant legs. “I’m sure the Winklevosses would love to hear that fucking them constitutes a life choice. I just wanted to know whether their dicks are as big as their egos. Saverin’s alright. And I actually kind of like working here, yaknow? I’m not going to sell out the boss’s wife.”

Dustin grasps for his cup threateningly, but he nods, slow and appreciative.

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that.” Chris says grudgingly. “But I have to admit that I’ve always wondered.”

“Eduardo’s with Mark now.” Dustin warns them, cupping Diego in his hands and offering him up like Simba. “Remember? Guys?”

“Yeah.” Sean says. He walks over to Dustin’s bedside and reaches out gingerly to pet Diego. “They’ll be okay. I wouldn’t worry.”

“It feels so wrong, but I believe you.” Chris says, coming over to sit on Dustin’s other side.

Dustin hums. “Now we’ve conquered our fear of Sean Parker, do you think we need to bother worrying about rogue Winklevii and uppity tyrannosaurs?”

Sean smiles into his lap.

Chris rubs his hands over his face. “Honestly, no. Mark is way scarier than anything out in the park. It is incredibly unlikely that the Winklevosses are still here, and-” He twists his lips and made a _face_ at Dustin.

“Maybe they can sort themselves out on their own.”

Dustin snorts.

 

\---

  
“I’m coming too,” Eduardo says in a voice that brooks no argument.

“No,” Mark snaps.

He stuffs supplies into his hoodie pocket, sliding extras into his back pockets.

Eduardo reaches for one of Dustin’s pre-stocked utility belts (and who does he think he is, Batman?), clipping it around his waist silently. He sits down and starts swapping his dress shoes for hiking boots.  
Mark huffs and sits at the other end of the bench to pull at his own laces.

Eduardo watches his struggle until he can’t bear it anymore. He gets to his knees and bats Mark’s hands away. Loops them around, pushes through, under, pulls, repeats the action smoothly.

“They’re mine too,” Eduardo says quietly, without looking up. He knows Mark will be stubbornly staring at the wall behind him.

“You can’t bring me here, program me into dinosaur DNA and then refuse to let me go out into the park I paid for, Mark.”

It’s a dick move, pulling the money card, Eduardo knows. But he also knows that it’ll get a reaction out of Mark, which is more than he can boast the other six days of the week.

Mark gets up brusquely and handprints a locker embedded in the wall beside the taser recharge point. It’s stocked with a selection of guns, though Eduardo couldn’t name any of them. They look expensive and deadly. He pulls out two, and a couple of rattling boxes of ammunition. He loads them expertly and slides them into the empty spots in his utility belt.

“Ready?” says Mark, resigned to it.

 

\---

 

They take the four wheel drive as close to the surveillance point as they can get on the touring roads. Mark drives all the way, his teeth gritted. Eduardo spends the trip staring out the windows at the track. He’s never had the pleasure of taking the tour, and he’s impressed. There is no doubt that the park will make good on his investment. The foliage is beautiful. It looks like Chris has had Christy Lee and the botanists reviving long extinct plants and trees, as well as replicating herbivore foliage. This is work above and beyond what he’d originally commissioned them to do.

They pass multiple herbivore enclosures, and Eduardo manages to spot not only Sheldon the Triceratops, but a small family of Diplodocus across the valley, and a multitude of free range Procompsognathus, likely relations of Myrtle.

There are small mammals like Eduardo has never seen before, even in books or zoos – he assumes they must be breeding more natural prey for the carnivores. It’s all so much bigger off the audit page. He’s constantly exclaiming and pointing out his finds to Mark, momentarily forgetting their cold war.

Ironically, they’re crossing into carnivore country by the time Mark finally loosens up. He drives a little looser, seeming to know the dips and twists in the road like the back of his hand. And Eduardo supposes he must. This is raptor country, after all.

They don’t see anything but small grazing mammals for a while. Eduardo figures that this is probably a good sign, as the less agitated the lizards are, the less likely they are to attack. This has been a bit of a rule of thumb with Diego lately, as Dustin has discovered through liberal loss of skin to his hands.

They pull off to the side of the road in the middle of the large carnivore stretch. Mark turns the key off, but leaves it in the ignition. They sit in the mid afternoon swelter for a couple of minutes.

Mark wipes a droplet of sweat off of his forehead, pursing his lips.

“Which one of them?” He asks, finally. The question bursts out with all the force that eight months of wondering can hold.

To his credit, Eduardo doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know who Mark is talking about.

“Neither,” he says, “I never – not with them. I was just a consulting accountant there, but they were kind, considering, you know, the whole intellectual theft suit,” Eduardo shrugs. “You were mad at me, and my father...I quit after the first couple of weeks, Mark. I went home, and -” he looks pained and sad in equal amounts. “My father won’t even look at me anymore, you know.”

Mark studies him closely. It’s a gaze Eduardo has seen wilt scientists twice their age. He can see right through them, dissect their motives. Eduardo isn’t afraid to let Mark see his motives.

“It was an internship with the right people.” Eduardo says baldly. “Sean had taken everything already, and you were so angry. My father was pressuring me to go to New York. It looked like the only choice at the time.”

He doesn’t say sorry. He’d come back.

“You came back.” Mark echoed his thoughts.

“I came back for you,” Eduardo says, truthfully.

Mark smiles, quick, but it’s there for a split second, and Eduardo _sees_ it. “I know.”

He swings open the drivers’ side door. “Let’s go smash their shit.”

 

\---

  
Tramping through the jungle is more fun than Eduardo expected. Mark tells him off every five minutes, threatening that they’ll get jumped by one of the raptor packs or surprised by one of the tyrannosaurs if he keeps up his noise. Eventually, Mark just gives up and seizes his hand so that they can at least minimise the likelihood of being picked off separately. This way he only has to hack at the foliage once, rather than endure listening to Eduardo bash at it fruitlessly.

It also means he can point out particularly complicated sequences he’d hand coded for the botanists, and watch Eduardo’s face shift into wonder as he realises that Mark is bringing back 65 million year old flowers, because he _can_ , because he is _that good_ at what he does.

Mark has always known that Eduardo is a sucker for a success story. He appreciates talent. His pupils dilate, and the tips of his ears flush, and Mark likes to make it happen, likes to be the cause, should be the only one who can impress him like that.

They approach the point Mark has plotted in his smartphone GPS, and Eduardo spots it first, the white hood of the camera peering out from under a clump of ferns. The clouds decide to open as they circle the clearing, soaking them with a warm downpour.

Eduardo shakes the water out of his hair, laughing. The heat and the damp reminds him of childhood - a childhood before Miami. He hasn’t stood in the rain in a long time, and hasn’t been this deliriously happy whilst soaked to the skin in even longer.

Mark clamps a hand over his mouth reactively, dragging him under the cover of a bright clutch of flowering bushes. “Tyrannosaur.” Mark hisses. He doesn’t sound panicked, instead rather pleased at the prospect.

Eduardo shrinks back and squints through the leaves, breathing slowly against Mark’s damp hand.  
There is a dinosaur in the clearing – not huge, like Eduardo has expected, but probably about the height of two grown men. The rex must be a teenager, if dinosaurs can have youth divisions.

“That’s Britney.” Mark whispers. “Stay still.” He wraps an arm around Eduardo’s waist to be sure.

Britney snuffles around for a minute or two, almost knocking over the Winklevoss camera in her inspection.

“Even she knows that box is bullshit.” Mark mutters.

Eduardo nods slowly, wondering whether Britney would do them the supreme favour of helping them to knock out the camera. Night is beginning to fall fast.  She swipes at it, but loses interest when it refuses to react, finally snorting and padding away on heavy feet.

“Beautiful.” Eduardo breathes into Mark’s palm.

Mark relaxes his grasp, but holds them there for a long five minutes, just to give Britney a head start.

“I’m glad you think so.” Mark answers, eventually. He grazes a hand over Eduardo’s hip before he lets go, passing into the clearly cautiously.

He drops down in front of the camera, smirking suddenly. “Come here, Wardo.”

They crouch in the rain and wave into the lens together for a moment. Eduardo spares the Winklevosses a jaunty salute before Mark steps back and kicks in the face of the camera with the steel toe of his boot.

Eduardo pulls it out of the soil with a yank and slings it over his shoulder. “Satisfied?”

Mark shrugs noncommittally. He licks the raindrops that have collected on the bow of his upper lip. Eduardo unconsciously mimics him.

“We won’t make it back in this dark. Can’t risk torches in this enclosure,” Mark says, matter of fact.

“But-” Eduardo peers through the clearing, hesitant. The gloom has truly fallen, and the rain is not showing any sign of letting up.

“This way, I know the topography better to the north.”

Mark wraps his fingers around Eduardo’s free wrist securely. Eduardo has no choice but to trust Mark’s inexplicable sense of direction and follow him down a barely-there trail in the near pitch black of the jungle.

It seems like a longer walk that it probably is, but the dark always seems to lengthen time, the lack of sunlight disorienting all of Eduardo’s senses: time, direction, distance. Despite being reliably able to tell anyone the time with an error margin of no more than fifteen minutes during daylight hours, he always finds himself off by hours when it comes to the night.

Mark had always seemed to have the opposite problem – though he’d never consider it a problem. Time was irrelevant to Mark. He merely did things as swiftly as he considered they should be done. He never blinked at the loss of days at a time. Eduardo has watched Mark code through a day and a night without faltering, Mark only surprised when he emerged from his haze 22 hours later to find that Eduardo was still on his bed, having finally succumbed to exhaustion and curled up under a blanket to wait out the last few hours.

In the same way Mark seems intent on marching endlessly through the scrub, silently batting away huge closed up flower buds. Eduardo has a new respect for the night vision capabilities of computer nerds. He has adjusted to the darkness well enough to dodge most of the trees, even thought he has to wipe rainwater out of his eyes every two minutes; but Mark’s steps are by far more quiet and sure. Clearly he knows the trail now, from the speed at which they twist through the jungle.

Mark has adopted an odd gait too, Eduardo notices. He moves smoothly, obviously a learned form of movement, as there is still a familiar repressed slouch to his movements. He picks his feet up now, which is a big difference considering Mark was always the guy to be counted on to give you a static shock, thanks to the way he dragged his feet on the carpet at Kirkland.

For a short distance Eduardo assumes that Mark is nervous as they proceed. He darts his head from side to side, peering into the undergrowth on the left and the right far more than ahead of them. It is only when Mark spooks him by pulling them off the trail for a small family of what look like badgers to pass them that he remembers Jurassic Park. Eduardo specifically recalls the hunting strategies of velociraptors – they work in threes or more, one decoy meeting the prey head on, two killing from either side. A chill runs up his back and he shakes off Mark’s hold around his wrist. He takes his hand instead, curling his fingers through Mark’s, the warmth a calming antidote. Mark squeezes immediately, and pulls them onward.

“Not far, Wardo,” he says, pitching low. His voice doesn’t carry far.

On purpose, Eduardo realises.

“This next valley is safe, off the hunting paths. We’re lucky we haven’t bumped into any of my packs yet.”

He sounds a little harried, triple-checking their left side before he moves them back onto the faint track.

Eduardo nods before he remembers that Mark can’t see him. He strokes his thumb over Mark’s wrist instead, hoping to convey some amount of grateful. Insisting on tagging along had seemed like a strategic move at first. It had felt important to show Mark that he has a vested interest in the welfare of the outer reaches of the park, to prove that he can do more than sit around stroking the newborn hatchlings and teaching Diego to beg for grubs.

It is becoming discomfortingly clear to Eduardo that he is not cut out to venture into the park without escort. Mark, with his sharp understanding of his creations and a blatant lack of fear that in turns intimidates and impresses Eduardo, has been protecting him this whole time. Logically, it should be a feeling of shame that fills him, but instead, he feels warmed with appreciation.

They clear the top of a ridge. Frustratingly, they get less rainfall in the open than they have been under the foliage. Nonetheless, Mark points out the slippery mud that will slide them back to the bottom of the valley if they lose their footing.

The slope down the other side is gentle and stony, made up of scoria, volcanic rock from what it sounds like to tread on. Eduardo notes this with interest. They must be on the collapsed cone of an old volcano. The brush on this side is lower and less lush, barring the immense trees that seem to cluster together, determined on surviving anything.

It would be difficult for anything bigger than a bent over human to hide in this vegetation, Eduardo thinks, putting two and two together.

“Here,” Mark says, dragging Eduardo behind a mass of overgrown flax.

It is dark and smells like the damp forest. He is surprised to find himself in what looks like a tiny, but dry room. It dawns on him. “This is a hollow tree,” he says, with wonder. “It’s huge, Mark, did you find this-“

Mark slips his hands into Eduardo’s pants, deliciously warm fingers un-tucking his dress shirt for him.

“With the velo-What are you doing?”

Mark’s hands move deftly to Wardo’s belt, flicking out the pin, and pushing his pants down for him. “Take off your shoes,” Mark says, starting on Wardo’s buttons. “We’re safe in here.”

Eduardo is too blindsided to do anything but comply, shuffling out of his boots and the soaked socks he’d been trying to ignore.

“You’ll catch a cold in wet clothes,“ Mark sees fit to explain. He has trouble with a button, and shrugs, wrenching at it hard enough to snap the thread.

“Uh, I’ll catch one out of them too.” Wardo points out, his mouth quickly becoming the driest part of his body.

Mark shakes his head, easing the shirt down Eduardo’s arms, leaving him in nothing more than damp boxer briefs. He pushes Eduardo gently against the wall of the tree and leans up to kiss him, finally, sighing his relief into his lips, shoulders dropping the tension of having to play look out for two people.

Eduardo gasps into his mouth momentarily, but he kisses back, lips parting almost immediately under Mark’s firm movements. He allows Mark to direct the kiss, responding to his cues. He is panting audibly when Mark pulls back to allow him to breathe.

Mark studies him quickly. His eyes are hooded, tracking Mark’s movements, and his chest is heaving. He can see that Eduardo is half hard, outlined against the damp fabric of his briefs. Mark wonders about how uncomfortable the underwear is, and he reaches down between them to pull them down Eduardo’s hips.

Eduardo makes a tiny involuntary hiccup at his touch, jerking against his hands. Mark looks up at his face again. He can’t boast any great ability with reading emotion, but Eduardo looks flushed and he is breathing hard. He doesn’t seem upset, so Mark carries on, dragging the damp garment down Eduardo’s legs. He lets it fall most of the way to the ground.

Mark steps back, takes in the expanse of Eduardo’s tan skin. He _wants_ , so he takes it, stepping back into Eduardo’s space. He tastes the skin of his neck, mouth stilling long enough for him to feel the heavy drag of Eduardo’s pulse. He can hear hot blood coursing through veins and arteries, hidden beneath the surface. The reason his creatures breathe, run, mate – hidden causes of life, based in flesh, driven by programmed responses and cues.

Mark can predict the behaviour of more than a thousand beings on his island. Eduardo - he cannot. It is exciting. Mark is used to cool dry skin, to turning lizards over to see their bellies, matching code to scales, finding perfection via his compiler and a good friend with a dab hand with a pipette.

Eduardo is so intricate a creature, and he is terrifyingly warm despite the chill on his skin from the rain. People don’t have absolute code. It is impossible that they be perfect. Eduardo is more perfect than anything Mark has yet made, and he can’t understand it.

He can comprehend want though –if Eduardo wants it – if Eduardo wants him.

Mark rubs against him painstakingly. He presses his hip into Eduardo’s belly, feels the hard line of Eduardo’s cock slide against his clothing. He stays there like that, pushing firmly with his thigh, watching Eduardo’s eyelashes flutter, and when one of Eduardo’s hands comes up, shaking, and he buries his long fingers in Mark’s hair, Mark loses his mind for just a second.

He crowds Eduardo against the concaved curve of the tree’s innards, grabbing at him greedily, pushing their lips together with open mouthed kisses that he hopes communicate more than the handful of inadequate words he has gifted Eduardo with over the course of their friendship.

Sweet Eduardo, with his encouragements and his dorm tidying, his cooking and his caring, and his carte blanche personality. Mark takes from him again, like he has been for years. He savages Wardo’s mouth, nipping his lips and filling him with his tongue, tasting the insides of Wardo’s cheeks, the delicately ridged roof, the choking sob of air Eduardo expels when he tries to pull back. Mark takes all this, in return leaving behind bruised lips and the memory of intrusion, of possession.

Eduardo is moaning, Mark realises, breathing hard. Whining and bucking against Mark’s hip. He slides his hand between them and takes hold of Eduardo’s cock. It is smeared with pre-come already. He squeezes firmly, then pumps it steadily. Eduardo cries out, sinking against the bark behind him. Mark knows the tree bark is rough against Wardo’s back.

“Ow,” Eduardo groans, but he doesn’t stop pushing into Mark’s hand. He just arches his back away from the bark, whines when Mark rubs his thumb in circles over the tip.

Mark pulls back and considers the scratches Wardo is rubbing at with one hand. “Sorry,” he says hoarsely, not sure he can trust his voice enough to say anything further. Instead, Mark drags his hoodie over his head and lays it on the dry ground at his feet. “Lie down,” he says.

Eduardo looks at him for a moment, clearly considering the situation. Knowing Eduardo, Mark supposes he is worrying about redundant factors, such as whether dinosaurs will catch them having intercourse (they won’t care, Wardo) or whether Mark is certain he wants to be with him (a stupid question, as Mark is fairly sure that everyone who had ever met Eduardo Saverin has wanted to bend him over their desk).

Eduardo sits down on the hoodie awkwardly, his thin legs taking up most of their floor space despite being folded up. His cock is still firm and full, despite the lull. Mark undoes his fly, kicks off his jeans and sneakers hurriedly, tears off his t-shirt. He pauses to look at Eduardo again.

His eyes are huge in the semi darkness, pupils blown so wide that he can barely see the warm brown of his irises.

“I’m getting cold,” Eduardo says quietly, hugging his knees.

Mark drops to his knees, reaching for Eduardo carefully. “Have you ever been with a guy?” He asks in a low voice.

Eduardo nods, smiling wryly at the bitter scowl he gets in return.

“Will you let me fuck you?”

Eduardo’s eyes seem to darken, if that is at all possible. He lets go of a trembling breath. “Please.”

Mark moves quickly, sinuous and quiet, pushing Eduardo onto his back. He settles over him, pinning him down with his weight. Eduardo thinks fleetingly of the raptors Mark has been running with, and shivers involuntarily.

He presses against Eduardo’s stomach hard, hands wrapped around Eduardo’s upper arms, holding him still. Eduardo sucks in shakily as Mark’s dick slides across his stomach, over his navel, leaving a slick trail of precome.

Mark licks his palm thoroughly, rubbing their dicks together with a shudder. Eduardo strains up as if electrified, his eyes squeezed shut, mouth slack, lips trembling. He moans, low and agonized when Mark wraps his wet hand around the two of them. He moves his palm over them quickly, coaxing more wetness out of his own slit.

He releases them, grasping at Eduardo’s thighs instead, spreading him wide. Eduardo keens, encouraging him, curling a leg up against his abdomen.

“Yeah, Mark, yeah, just-“ he doesn’t elaborate, just strains up, lifting his hips, spreading obscenely. Mark can see _everything_.

Somehow Mark has a tube in his hands, where the hell it could have come from is beyond Eduardo until he thinks, _Dustin and his damned pre-stocked utility belts_. Mark gets the cap off and he's probably squeezing out the entire contents of the bottle into his hand and over Eduardo's open thighs, a complete waste, and just this once, Eduardo doesn't care.

Mark drags him closer, his lip curling faintly as he reaches for him with his slicked hand, stroking gently over Eduardo’s balls. He rubs firmly against Eduardo’s pucker with the pad of his thumb. Eduardo pants, jerking as Mark presses inwards. He rubs the rim methodically, working his way inside, slow and steady.

“-In me now,” Eduardo moans, pressing down.

“I think you’re underestimating the size of my dick.” Mark says, modestly.

Eduardo snorts, just managing a retort, “It’s not as big as your ego.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mark says, twisting his thumb a little deeper, “Is that a challenge?”

Eduardo is momentarily incapacitated, trembling at Mark’s last push, “Y-yeah.”

Mark pulls his hand away and lines himself up, leaning over Eduardo’s torso, biting his lip in a grin.

He rubs his dick against Eduardo’s inner thigh, slapping the leaking head against the delicate skin there, stiffening to full hardness.

He tries to push the head of his cock into Eduardo’s hole, nice and slow.

Eduardo writhes, flails his hands up to grasp at Mark’s shoulders and wrap around his neck.

Even with the lube it isn’t really enough yet, just as he’d known. It’s still hot, though.

“Fuck,” Mark mutters. “Want you.”

Eduardo goes still. He gazes up at Mark from his back, chest rapidly rising and falling, his legs still splayed.

Mark tries again, pushes harder, rubs his dick around Eduardo’s tight little hole, smearing precome around.

Eduardo is whining now. When Mark pulls away, he gives him a wobbly smile, shrugging indifferently at being wrong.

“Guess you are pretty big,” he concedes shakily. “You should probably put your fingers in my mouth.”

Mark drops Eduardo’s thigh, lunges up his body, pushes his fingers deep into Eduardo’s mouth. Somehow, they’re gone almost as quickly as they came and then Eduardo is grabbing for Mark’s forearm, trying to slow the two fingers he is sliding into him ruthlessly.

“Fuck!” he wails, twisting in Mark’s grip. He arches, barely able to keep from coming immediately. Mark pulls them out, leaves that perfect spot alone, and Eduardo drops limp, back down against Mark’s hoodie.

“You don’t do that!” He half-shouts at Mark, kicking him hard with the heel of the foot he has hooked around Mark’s waist.

Mark shrugs, rubbing at what Eduardo spitefully hopes will turn out to be a bruise. “Your toes are all curled up.” Mark says, voice warm with approval.

He circles Eduardo’s hole again with his dick, just teasing, then fingers him shallowly with as many wet digits as he can manage (he barely gets to three and Eduardo is sobbing and making fists in the fleecey fabric of the hoodie under him).

Mark kneels up a little, and Eduardo tracks him through half closed eyes.

“Suck me?” Mark asks, and it’s that he _asks_ that makes Eduardo smile and nod, wetting his lips again.

Mark takes and takes, and Eduardo knows this, expects this. He even likes it a little. All he asks in return is a little appreciation. Just because he’d never say no to Mark, doesn’t mean Mark should assume he has no choice.

“Yes,” says Eduardo, of course.

Mark slides up his body, plants his knees in the dirt either side of Eduardo’s head.

“Yeah.” Mark agrees, resting his dick against Eduardo’s cheek gently. He buries one hand in Eduardo’s hair, fingers stroking behind his ear gently.

Eduardo turns his face, mouths at Mark’s dick, kisses it fleetingly. It’s heavy against his lips, hot and perfectly smooth skinned. He takes it into his mouth, lets Mark push in and out for a while like he did with his fingers.

The taste of the precome and lubricant is salty as he sucks lazily, but more overwhelming is how gentle Mark is being.

“Yeah,” Mark murmurs again after a minute or two, pulling out of Eduardo’s mouth gently.

He slides down Eduardo’s body, resuming his prior position between his legs. He lifts Eduardo’s hips again, pulling them flush. Eduardo can feel Mark’s dick pushing into him, easy this time, stretching him, the shaft following, smooth and filling.

“Okay?” Mark says.

Eduardo can feel him trembling with the effort of staying perfectly still, half buried in him. He has to admire his restraint.

“Yeah,” he breathes, arching carefully, pressing against Mark. He bites his cheek at the stretch this entails. “That’s – you’re doing it exactly right.”

Mark flicks his eyes up from where he has Eduardo opened up around him, the look of aroused curiosity on his face replaced with a split second quirk of the lips “Exactly right?” he deadpans, and Eduardo is simultaneously exasperated and impressed by Mark’s utter self control. He can’t think of anyone else capable of keeping their poker face in order in the midst of sex.

Of course Mark simply has to top himself in every field, and he proceeds to do so by leaning over Eduardo and thoroughly kissing him as he works his hands under his shoulders and waist, dragging Eduardo up and into his lap.

“Good?” Mark pants, releasing Eduardo’s mouth in time for him to choke out a groan as he falls victim to gravity, and slides further down Mark’s cock.

“Where the _fuck_ did you learn that?” Eduardo gasps. He has one arm looped around Mark’s neck for balance, and has planted the other hand against one of Mark’s thighs to stop sliding down any further. Mark is pushing to go really fucking deep, really fucking fast, and Eduardo would be lying if he said he isn’t feeling the burn. He can definitely see a couple of days of limping in his future.

“Is this the kind of language you’ve been teaching our kids?” Mark smirks, pressing his thumbs into Eduardo’s hips.

Eduardo jerks, “Shit, Mark,” then pants hard as the movement settles him a little deeper. “Oh god- shut up,” he groans.

“Charming.” Mark comments. He wraps his hands around Eduardo’s prominent hipbones and drags them down, rolling his hips up at the same time.

Eduardo makes a little broken sound, and Mark repeats the manoeuvre precisely, over and over until Eduardo is grinding himself down without encouragement, riding Mark’s dick because it is so fucking good and Mark is fucking biting his throat – not like the little nips that Diego gives him when he is being cuddly – but hard, sucking and licking over the bruise.

Everyone will see it when they get back. Everyone will know – that he and Mark went out into the jungle and fucked. He stills momentarily and his cheeks flame in pre-emptive embarrassment.

“Hey,” says Mark. His hands are still rubbing over Eduardo’s hips. He is licking his lips, as self-satisfied as an overfed cat. Eduardo can’t remember him smirking this much in weeks.

Mark lifts him up, tenderly, and pulls him down his dick again, like he’s reminding Eduardo of the technique.

“Keep going.” Mark wraps one of his tactile hands leisurely around Eduardo’s dick.

Eduardo rocks in place, squeezing tight around Mark where he’s bottomed out inside him. Mark grunts, somehow managing to sound both annoyed and turned on.

He jerks Eduardo off between them, squeezing and thumbing the head of his cock. He comes with a cry, spilling hot all over Mark’s stomach, and Mark just looks at the mess and then at Eduardo’s face, his hunger obvious in his eyes. Eduardo sags against him, eyes squeezing shut, pliable and warm in his climax.

Mark bounces Eduardo in his lap a while longer, groaning at how tight he clenches involuntarily through his orgasm.

“Oh,” says Eduardo, his eyes fluttering open when he finds himself sliding down Mark’s dick again. “Oh, wow.” It’s too much stimulation, but it feels so fucking good, and Mark still has his arms around him, lifting him gently and – fuck - “Fuck. Mark, that’s way too, too much-”

“I know,” Mark mutters, slamming Eduardo down his dick a couple more times. He can feel Eduardo tightening around him erratically. On the fifth thrust he comes, spurting nice and deep inside Eduardo in a series of quick shuddering jerks. He gets a predatory sense of pride from that. He has definitely been working with the raptors too long.

Eduardo is shaking, limbs still curled around Mark, plastered to him. He doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t want to dislodge Mark.

Eventually, Mark moves. He eases out of Eduardo, lets him sprawl boneless on the dusty floor of their shelter.

“You’ll get cold.” He says awkwardly after a couple of seconds. He picks up his hoodie and dusts it off. He then crouches over Eduardo, who currently doesn’t seem capable of anything beyond trying to stop shaking.

“Here.”

Eduardo sits up slowly, winces briefly. He blinks at Mark, taking in his ruffled hair and the sweat and cum coating his chest. And the hoodie he is offering him.

He helps Eduardo into it gently, pushing his hands through the arms, and pulling the fabric down his torso. Eduardo shivers as Mark smoothes his hands over the fabric, still over-sensitive to touch. Mark kisses him once, chastely, and leaves him to sort through the clothing they’d discarded earlier.

His jeans aren’t too wet, so he pulls them on, wiping his stomach off with one of his damp socks. He throws their other clothes over the sheltered roots and branches at the entrance to the hollow. Everything else will need a couple of hours to dry out.

Mark sits down next to Eduardo and puts a bold arm around his waist. He figures there is absolutely no way Wardo can misread his gestures now, and it is gratifying to be proved right as Eduardo nestles closer.

Mark misses his hoodie when the storm picks up and a chill wind whips through their shelter momentarily, but Eduardo presses against him, and his body heat is enough to stave off the chill. He thinks about reaching under the pullover, pressing his sticky fingers against Eduardo’s belly. Maybe bringing him off nice and slow this time. There is nothing else constructive to do out here without even his tablet computer.

Eduardo snuffles against his bare shoulder, breaking the silence.

Mark can feel the rumbling vibration of the words against his skin almost before he hears them.

“Hope Dustin is feeding Diego.” He says quietly into Mark’s neck.

“He will.” Mark says, certain of the fact.

“Diego doesn’t like the worms, only the grubs...” he murmurs.

Mark is getting chills at the way Eduardo’s speech is slurring into his lilting Portuguese accent.

“I didn’t know that.” Mark responds honestly. He lazily strokes a hand up Eduardo’s back and back down, smirking when he reaches the hem of the hoodie where it just stretches over the curve of Eduardo’s ass.

Eduardo squirms, self-consciously pulling the hem of the oversized hoodie further down his thighs.

“I know what you should call the park,” Eduardo says a few minutes later, out of nowhere.

The sex, he has to admit, seems to have cleared his head, even if it has rendered his muscles useless for the foreseeable future.

“If you’re going to say ‘Jurassic Park’, you should just get down on your knees again, because that would be a better use of your mouth,” Mark says, tracing the outline of Eduardo’s ear with one index finger.

Eduardo shivers, “No,” he retorts, “I was actually thinking ‘Pangaea‘ would be a little more fitting.”

“Huh.” Mark says, surprised. “That’s actually pretty good.”

“Not just a pretty face,” Eduardo says, self-deprecating.

“No one has ever called me shallow.” Mark says. “You are the best intern in the hatchery, after all.”

Eduardo has to turn away to hide his smile. “I love you, you know,” he says.

Mark laughs, voice sharp, “Finally.”

Eduardo elbows him as hard as he can with pretty much zero feeling in his arms. He is _exhausted_. He drifts off for a while, but not so deeply that he misses Mark whispering against the nape of his neck.

“Love you too.”

 

\---

 

The edge of the enclosure isn’t far from Mark’s hollow tree safehouse, but it does involve crossing the most populated section of the carnivore environment. This combined with Eduardo’s very badly concealed limp ensures that it takes them two hours of slow walking before they reach the four-wheeler.

They drive back almost as silently as they’d come, only this time Wardo sleeps for most of the journey.

He droops lazily against Mark’s side, head on his shoulder, both hands curled in the pocket of the hoodie he still hasn’t returned.


End file.
